A Flight of Arrows (4 page)

“This time,” Stone Thrower said.

Two Hawks started to reach across the table toward her, then pulled his hand back. Only his dark eyes reached. “Do not cross the creek alone. You will make my heart easier if you don't. All our hearts,” he added.

Seated at the end of the table, Mr. Doyle cleared his throat. Stone Thrower's spoon scraped his bowl. Two Hawks was waiting for a response from her, too much of his heart in his eyes. Warmth flooded Anna's cheeks. Reluctantly she nodded. “And there's no word of Sir John's regiment?”

Two Hawks shook his head. “I have no news of William. Yet.”

Silence fell as Mrs. Doyle moved the kettle from the heat. Into that silence dropped the unvoiced question: What if Johnson's regiment was part of the force said to be ready to attack on Lake Champlain? The force General Arnold was meant to repel with his hastily assembled navy.

“It is your day, yes?”

Anna looked at Good Voice, who'd taken a seat beside her with porridge and tea, wearing a short gown and petticoat Mrs. Doyle had altered to fit. Her blue eyes held the same troubled uncertainty that twisted Anna's heart; still she smiled at Anna, who replied, “I'm twenty today. That sounds old to me.”

“It is the oldest
you
have been, so to you it seems so.” Two Hawks's mother stared at the food before her. “My son's return makes you glad?”

“It does.” Only with his mother—and with Lydia—did Anna need not pretend her feelings for Two Hawks, and his for her, were anything but consuming. Good Voice, it turned out, had known of their love long before Anna met her. She seemed accepting of it, but sometimes Anna saw a shadow in the woman's eyes when she caught her son looking at Anna. “Stone Thrower seems ready to cast off those crutches. You'll be anxious to return to Kanowalohale?”

She'd lowered her voice to ask the question, but Stone Thrower overheard. “I could not run the distance as does this son of mine,” he said, with an amused glance at Two Hawks. “But I am ready to make the journey.”

“You'll go before the major returns?” Mr. Doyle inquired.

Stone Thrower shared a look across the table with Good Voice. “We will wait for Aubrey's return. A little longer.”

As if on cue there came a knock at the kitchen-yard door. Joy flared in Anna's chest before she realized Papa wouldn't knock. The latch sounded and the door opened a few inches. Lydia van Bergen's capped head came into view.

“Good morning,” she greeted one and all cheerily. “Mind if I join you?”

Anna rose as Lydia entered and enveloped her in an embrace chilled from her ride from town. Anna had lost count of the births she and Lydia, as midwives, had attended together and the hours spent working in the kitchen of Lydia's house inside Schenectady's old stockade—a kitchen transformed into an apothecary workshop. Though Lydia, daughter and widow of apothecaries, didn't claim the title in an official capacity, people came to her for the treatment of ailments beyond the parturient.

“Happiest of birthdays, my girl.” Lydia held her by the shoulders to gaze at her with warm affection. At nearly thirty-two, Lydia was strikingly
lovely with her black hair and blue eyes set against pale skin, her smile so wide it lit a room.

“Hang your cloak,” Mrs. Doyle said from the hearth. “I've a serving o' porridge left in the kettle. Come. Sit you down and eat it.”

“You must have been away afore dawn,” Mr. Doyle said, unfolding his long frame from the table to make room.

“Nearly so.” Lydia hung her cloak on a peg by the door but lingered there. “I've my mare hitched outside.”

Mr. Doyle said, “You'll find her down to the barn when you want her.”

Anna was halfway to the table when she realized Lydia still hadn't followed. She'd caught Mr. Doyle by the sleeve as he made to pass. He bent his lofty head to hear something she whispered into his whiskered ear. The old man appeared to stifle a grin, then nodded and went out the kitchen door.

Stone Thrower followed, forgetting his crutches.

“Have you news of Papa?” Anna asked, as Mrs. Doyle set out the porridge.

Lydia hovered at the door. “I went down to the Binne Kill last evening to speak to Captain Lang. No word yet, I'm afraid.” Ephraim Lang was Papa's partner in the trade he did with the forts, settlements, and Indian towns upriver, facilitated by the bateaux Papa built at his boatyard on the Binne Kill, the town's riverfront. Captain Lang had stayed in Schenectady to look after the business in Papa's absence. “I'd hoped more than anything to bring you such news today. But since that isn't to be…”

Lydia turned toward the opening door. A large parcel wrapped in canvas was handed in to her by Mr. Doyle, and the door shut. Lydia carried the parcel to the table and stepped back, face alight with expectancy. “For you, Anna. And high time.”

Anna trailed her, awash with surprise. “What is it?”

“Open it.” Mrs. Doyle wore a smile so broad Anna guessed she was privy to whatever the contents might be. Two Hawks, Good Voice, Lydia, and Mrs. Doyle all watched as Anna untied the string, unwrapped the careful layers of canvas, and gasped.

“My own medical case? Truly?” The large square case was constructed of polished mahogany. Anna opened the lid to find four rows of glass bottles capped in pewter. The front rows were part of a section that opened at the center on side hinges to reveal multiple sets of drawers for ligaments, instruments, pillboxes, and more, each with a tiny brass knob. “Lydia…where did you find this?”

“Captain Lang had it in a shipment from Albany. It wasn't bespoke, so he said it was mine if I wanted it. It isn't new…”

“It's
perfect
.” Anna opened the drawers. “And you've stocked it. Lydia,
thank you
.”

While Lydia ate her porridge, Good Voice and Two Hawks examined the case with Anna, fingering the glass bottles, asking after their contents, until Two Hawks stifled a yawn. With the excitement of his return abated and food inside him, he was beginning to look as though he'd journeyed the night through—which, he'd admitted, he had.

“Go on up and sleep,” she bid him softly while Lydia and Good Voice chatted over the medicines and Mrs. Doyle busied herself scraping bowls. He did so, headed for the room that once was William's, leaving her with a sleepy smile that all but melted her into a puddle of longing.

Good Voice rose to help Mrs. Doyle with her work—they planned a special dinner to celebrate Anna's birthday—leaving Lydia and Anna alone at the table.

Lydia studied her fondly. “I'm glad you like it. I'd hoped to tuck in a letter from Reginald before I wrapped it, if only one had come.” Lydia longed for Papa in the way Anna longed for Two Hawks. Now at last there might be a chance for them, if Papa could find his way back from decades of regret and guilt that had raised so many walls around his heart.

“The day isn't over yet,” Lydia added, visibly brightening.

Though her well of hope seemed bottomless, the day wore on and there came no sound of horse's hooves on the lane. Even if he hadn't come to terms with Stone Thrower and Good Voice's forgiveness, and his tolerance for Two Hawks was as fragile as ice, and he'd have brought those tensions with him had he walked into the room, Anna longed to feel Papa's arms around her, to kiss the scar that crossed his cheekbone, the one he'd taken in rescuing her, that marked the joining of their lives as father and daughter.

But would his homecoming only serve to drive Two Hawks away? Was she going to have to choose between them?

October 11, 1776

Lake Champlain

R
eginald Aubrey had long believed his death would be by violence—at the hand of a particular Oneida warrior. Though violence
had
swept him from the deck of the gondola
Philadelphia
into the frigid waters of Lake Champlain, where he struggled now to stay afloat, the warrior had had nothing to do with it.

Reginald had meant to return to Schenectady and face the terrible wrong he'd done that warrior and his wife. What he'd done instead—when it was made clear General Arnold's need for experienced sailors had grown as desperate as his need for ships, with the British advancing up the lake from Canada to meet the newly fledged American navy—was to board the last rigged galley as a volunteer. Experience Reginald Aubrey possessed, having piloted bateaux on the Mohawk River for years. And he could swim—a fortuitous skill given that, after six hours' roaring exchange of gunfire, he'd been blown clean off the
Philadelphia
and that worthy craft he'd helped construct on the stocks at Skenesborough was fast going down to the lake bottom.

The battle had commenced before noon, off the shore of Valcour Island. Dusk was falling now, and the troubled water Reginald tread slammed a cold through his bones like the pounding of the guns still firing above his head. Smoke lay thick over the lake, obscuring what view the rough chop allowed of the battered American fleet: hulls and masts splintered by shot; sails and rigging in tatters aloft. The galleys,
Washington
,
Trumbull
. Arnold's flagship,
Congress
. The gondolas,
New Haven, Providence, Spitfire, Connecticut, Boston, New Jersey
. Others not seen since the battle's commencement. The schooner,
Royal Savage
, run aground on the southern tip of Valcour, its crew fled into the island's woods to escape the British guns and the Indians in their swift canoes.

The
Philadelphia
, still going down.

Guns thundered. Grapeshot screamed overhead. Round shot cracked greenwood hulls. Splintered planks and bodies littered the waves.

Reginald knew himself wounded, though cold had numbed the pain within seconds of submersion. His left leg and arm felt weaker than they ought. His right leg, usually the weaker, barely compensated as he struggled to stay afloat. Where were the ships' boats he'd seen pulling through the chaos, collecting the wounded? Where was the hospital ship,
Enterprise
?

But no. He'd no wish to lose a limb to a surgeon's saw. Better to bleed out in the water…

Drifting smoke parted, giving him glimpse of a rescue boat. He called out, but a swell smacked him, pulling him under into suffocating dark. When his head broke the surface again, there was only smoke and debris and his lungs sucking in air. Gunfire stuttered in sporadic concussion, then ceased. Ringing silence brought a fusillade of questions. Were the British backing down? Had Arnold surrendered? He'd lost sight of the
Philadelphia
. Valcour Island was the nearest land, closer than the lake's western shore. He could swim for it…Did he know in which direction to swim?

He went under, clawed back to the surface, choking.

With the cessation of the guns, he heard the cries of wounded men, again thought he glimpsed a hull nosing among floating debris. He tried to shout and went under, chest swelling to bursting. Tight, airless agony.

It seemed a very long time he took going down, time enough to torment himself over those he was leaving behind—

Anna, his dear girl. That she should hear of this battle and know he'd died on her day.

Lydia, who'd loved him at his most unlovable, waiting years for him to love her in return.

William, driven into the arms of the enemy, tattered and hulled by the knowledge that his life was built on lies.

The warrior, on his knees and bleeding…

—until like a sack of drowning puppies he was yanked from the depths by his coat's nape and hauled against something hard. His chest seared as his lungs convulsed, greedy for air.

“I have him!” a voice barked. Hands grappled him. Then he was sprawled in the bottom of a boat, gagging, expelling water in a throat-burning gush.

“Aubrey!” the voice said. “Welcome aboard, sailor.”

Then pain roared to life and he sank into blackness as drowning as lake water.

A blast shuddered through his bones, yanking him conscious, body convulsed in panic. Pain ripped through his flailing limbs before a steadying arm clamped across his chest.

“Easy,” a voice hoarse with weariness admonished. “You're aboard the
Congress
—what's left of her.”

Congress
. Arnold's ship.

He began to get his bearings. A blanket covered him. Beneath it he was soaked. The breeze striking his exposed bits had an icy edge.

Memory surfaced, bobbing up like flotsam. He'd heard a blast. Not from a broadside gun. The shudder had gone through his bones but not the deck beneath him. That seemed intact. And crowded—with its own crew and those rescued brought aboard. Men spoke around him, but
softly. The movement of the craft told him they lay at anchor. The cold air smelled of sulfur. It was near dark.

“Did I hear a blast?” he forced out, raw throated.

“That'll be the
Royal Savage
, what went aground on Valcour,” said a sailor nursing a wounded shoulder. Reginald strained to hear him over the ringing in his ears. “The redcoats—or their Indians—set her aflame. Ye heard the magazine go.”

Reginald absorbed the news as, in the relative quiet of snapping sheet and lapping swell and what sounded like hammers tapping, there arose in the distance a tumult of war cries.

He sat up, pushing back the blanket to assess his injuries. He was hatless, head wet and bared to the cold. His coat had been removed, dumped in a puddled heap on the deck beside him. His sodden shirt-sleeve, torn off at the elbow, bound his left forearm. Below the knee, his leg was wrapped in the remains of his stocking. Both bindings were bloodstained. The ringing in his head would be days in fading.

He was battered but whole. As for the fleet…

“Our losses? Besides the
Philadelphia
and
Royal Savage
.” He could make out the faces around him, features strained and powder blackened in the deepening twilight.

“Some as good as lost,” said the wounded sailor. “
Washington
is barely afloat, taking on water.
Congress
here was hulled below the water line. Mainmast took damage. The British drew off and anchored out of range to the south. Patching their ships as we're doing, I expect.”

“I can help with that.” Reginald started to haul himself to his feet, but another sailor clamped a hand over his arm, keeping him down.

“Ye'll do no such thing. I kept you off the
Enterprise
as you insisted, but those splinters went deep. Yanked 'em out myself. Pray ye the wounds don't fester.”

Reginald had no memory of the crude tending administered. All for the best, he thought, as a scream cut the air. It issued from the hospital
ship. “My thanks you have, on both counts. But what is to be done? Wait we for morning?”

“Himself is deciding, yonder.” The sailor canted his head toward the galley's stern, where three figures gathered close around a hooded lantern. Its feeble light revealed General Benedict Arnold, still in uniform—his only uniform; his belongings were aboard the burning
Royal Savage
, he having moved nothing but his flag over to the
Congress
before battle commenced—and the officers of his hastily assembled navy, General Waterbury and Colonel Wigglesworth.

“Sixty dead then?” Arnold was saying, turning to stare with narrowed intensity toward the leaping light on Valcour's distant shore, the lantern's faint glow limning his prominent nose.

“Yes sir,” said Wigglesworth. “Best as we can count at present. Ammunition is nearly three-fourths spent across the fleet, the vessels themselves barely seaworthy. They'll not withstand a repeat of today.”

“No question dawn shall see a resumption of the fight.” Waterbury rubbed a hand along his bristled jaw. “The choice, as I see it, is retreat or surrender.”

Silence fell while Arnold stared into the night. Reginald got haltingly to his feet. The shadowed forms of the fleet lay scattered at anchor. Beyond the light of the burning schooner, darkness hid the island's rocky southern shore, the Indians, the British fleet. And William, out there somewhere on that wind-swept lake?

Surely not. It would have taken him and Sam Reagan weeks to reach Canada afoot, find Johnson, join the Royal New Yorkers…if he'd carried through with that intention. Besides, it was British regulars and experienced sailors their ragtag navy had faced this day. Not raw colonial recruits.

Arnold, soot-blackened as a gunner, swept his gaze across the deck, giving Reginald a brief nod before addressing his officers. “We shall not surrender, but neither shall we engage them again in our present condition.
We retreat to Crown Point and preserve the remnants of our navy. Question being, which way?”

“They'll have us hemmed to the south. North around Valcour?”

“The wind is northerly,” Waterbury countered Wigglesworth's suggestion. “We'd have to row against it, no sails.”

Pulling at the braid of his battle-worn coat, drawn with weariness, Arnold weighed the options. The hazards of feeling their way around the north end of the island in the dark would be as unappealing to the general as it was to Reginald.

“Gentlemen,” he said at last, and in the glow of the hooded lantern, Reginald thought he saw the general's mouth curve. “We shall not go north. We shall go south—but quiet-like—straight through the enemy's anchored fleet.”