Never Call It Love (39 page)

"Wine,
Sir Patrick?"

"No,"
he said harshly, "and you had best not take any more. Did you know that
the English will soon invade this island?"

She
filled the glass, sipped from it. "Of course. Why else
should Victor
leave me so abruptly to return to the fort?"

"My
wife, brother, and I are sailing for America tonight."

He
saw fleeting pain in her almost indigo eyes, but when she spoke, her tone was
light. "Right through the English fleet?"

"Of
course not." He knew that the American ships would slip around to the
Atlantic side of the island, and then under full sail make a run straight north
through the darkness. They would not turn west until they were at least a
hundred miles from St.-Denis.

"There
may be hard fighting here. I thought you might want to come with us."

Again
she drank. "Why should I care? No one will fight
me.
And what is it
to me if the English take this island? I have always been a loyal subject of
King George."

Hearing
her slight emphasis on the word "loyal," he wondered again if it was
she who had denounced him to the English. Well, now he would have less chance
than ever of finding out.

"Besides,"
she went on. "I have heard that Admiral Jameson is with the Caribbean
fleet. I met him in London five years ago. He is rich, handsome, and a widower.
And he liked me. Who knows? St.-Denis's bad fortune may be the making of
mine."

"Very
well. But I felt that I..." He broke off.

"That
you owed me a chance to escape? Owed it to me for all those nights, not to
mention mornings and afternoons?"

"If
you care to phrase it that way." How beautiful she still was, even with
that faintly blurred look intoxication had brought to her face.

"I
wonder if once I might have gone with you. I know your wife believes..."

She
stopped, eyes brooding over some memory. Then her face cleared. "But
perhaps I am no longer what she
said I was. Or perhaps it is the red Indians. I'll
concede that I might go with you—yes, with the three of you—if that ship were
sailing for Europe. But not even for you will I go to a wilderness and get
scalped by savages. So bon voyage, Patrick. You owe me nothing."

More
than an hour later Elizabeth and Patrick set out for the ship, where Colin
already awaited them. In the gig, with their baggage piled behind them, they
drove down the dark road and into the square, where men and women had gathered
on the sidewalks in excited little groups. On the long slope of Harbor Street
they saw only women. Their customers were back at the fort now, or aboard ships
in the harbor.

As
the gig's wheels rattled over the wharf, Elizabeth said, "You went to see
Moira Ashley, didn't you? Did you offer to take her with us?"

He
threw her a startled look. How the devil had she guessed he might do that?
"Yes. She refused. But I had to make the offer. She's a countrywoman, and
for years she was my friend and neighbor."

Had
those been his only reasons? Elizabeth did not know. But what mattered was that
however wild or dangerous their destination might prove to be, at least Moira
Ashley was unlikely to appear there.

From
where she stood at one of the inn's third-floor windows, Elizabeth looked down
into the wide Philadelphia street. During the week she had been here she had
never tired of
looking out the window. She loved the street-corner orators, standing on wooden
crates as they quoted Paine and Rousseau and Franklin to knots of cheering
listeners. She loved the often ragged-looking American soldiers who still
drilled up and down the cobblestoned street behind their drummer boys, because
no one knew but what their services still might be needed, what with the
English hanging on in New York. She loved the red brick row houses opposite,
with their scrubbed white steps. They reminded her of houses in parts of
London. And she loved the voices that floated up to her, voices that spoke
English, and yet, already with an accent she had never heard in the land of her
birth.

In
short, she loved the vitality and excitement of this new young nation. She
wished that she could stay here in this city where it all began, a city where
men had penned bold words—about the rights of all men, about governments having
no just rights without "the consent of the governed"—that must have
sent a wave of alarm through every court in Europe.

But
they could not stay here. There were no distilleries for sale in Philadelphia,
even if Patrick and Colin had had the price. And the Stanford brothers had no
profession, nor even sufficient manual skills to offer an employer. The
solution, one that Patrick was determined upon, was to acquire land. But
already the prices of land around Philadelphia were soaring. Each day he and
Colin had ridden out, on hired mounts, to inspect farmland, and each day they
had found the price beyond them. Well, they would just have to keep looking.

Suddenly
she smiled and leaned a little farther out the window. Two men in stocking
caps, arms about each other's shoulders, reeled down the opposite sidewalk,
bawling out a sea chantey about a fair young mermaid. Behind them, imitating
their unsteady gait, trouped a number of small boys. Elizabeth knew the men
must be
sailors from some ship in the harbor. They reminded her of the boatswain who,
on the long voyage from St.-Denis, had helped relieve the monotony for crew and
passengers by singing chanteys, most of them severely expurgated to make them
suitable for Elizabeth's ears.

On
the whole, the voyage had not been too unpleasant True, the first forty-eight
hours while they sailed northward, with no lights showing at night, lest they
encounter an English ship, had been tense. But after that the voyage had been
uneventful. The captain, evidently well pleased with the money Colin had paid
him, had turned over his cabin to Patrick and Elizabeth and moved in with the
first mate. Colin had shared the second mate's cabin. Several times Elizabeth
had felt seasick, but remembering her first pregnancy, she realized she might
have experienced nausea even on dry land.

Now,
hearing familiar footsteps along the hall, she turned away from the window.
Patrick came in, his dark face triumphant. "We have it A hundred acres for
us, and a hundred for Colin."

"Where?"

He
looked uncomfortable. "I bought up some scrip." At her puzzled look,
he added, "Perhaps you haven't heard. The new government here has paid off
some of its soldiers in scrip redeemable for land."

"I
see. But where is this land you've bought?"

"A
little more than two hundred miles from here, on the other side of the
Alleghenies."

Dismay
held Elizabeth silent. Western Pennsylvania was still a wilderness, chiefly
because the English government afraid that it could not protect its colonial
subjects against the French and their Indian allies, had forbidden anyone to
settle "beyond the mountains." In fact, the Americans' desire to
expand westward had been one of the reasons for their rebellion.

He
said, "Where we are going is not as wild as you
might think.
There is already a road, not just a trail, across the mountains to New
Canterbury and beyond. New Canterbury is the name of the settlement where we
are going."

Elizabeth
found her voice. "But the child..

"I
will bring you back to Philadelphia in ample time for your lying-in. Now, I've
already bought two horses," he went on swiftly, "and a wagon. It has
a sailcloth top, like the gypsy caravans back in Ireland. I've also bought axes
and a plow and seed. But you must select what you will need to set up
housekeeping—bedding and cooking utensils and so on. Buy only what is
necessary. The horses will have trouble, as it is, drawing us over the
mountains."

As
she listened, Elizabeth had a feeling that had become familiar to her since her
path had first crossed Patrick Stanford's, a sense of being in the grip of a
whirlwind that might set her down anyplace, and then snatch her up again. And
yet, beneath her apprehension, she was aware of that same stirring of the
blood, that same eager curiosity about the future, which she had felt as the
French merchantman slipped through the black water toward the West Indies.

***

She
lay on her pallet in the heavily laden wagon, listening to the sounds of the forest
night. The sough of wind through pine branches, the melancholy hoot of an owl,
the liquid voice of the brook in which, three hours before, she had washed the
cooking pot and the pewter plates she and the Stanford men had used for their
supper of hare boiled with onions and carrots.

On
the ground beside the wagon, Colin muttered something in his sleep. Ever since,
ten days ago, they had left the last of the towns near Philadelphia behind
them, the men had slept on the ground—beside the wagon on clear nights, beneath
it on rainy ones—lest some marauding Indian or French trapper steal the horses.

Not
that they had encountered hostile men of any race or nationality during their
journey. Twice they had been welcome overnight guests at settlements along the
way. Their hosts, some of English descent, some of Scotch-Irish, had used their
arrival as an excuse for outdoor suppers, with food spread on rough-hewn
tables, and two campfires blazing in the cool June twilight.

At
both settlements, French trappers and Algonquian Indians were also among the
guests. The trappers were deeply sunburned, wiry men, wearing fur hats and
buckskin shirts and trousers. Used to slipping silently through forests and
along riverbanks in search of game, they moved quietly and spoke softly even
here in these outposts of civilization. Elizabeth found it almost incredible
that they were of the same stock as the mincing French aristocrats she had
sometimes met in London ballrooms, or the snobbish French bourgeoisie of
St.-Denis. But then, these Frenchmen seemed to feel that little except their
language bound them to their mother country. King Louis's quarrels with the
English, obviously, were not their quarrels. Even before the colonies had
revolted, the French
voyageurs
had brought their furs to such outposts
as these and traded for salt, whiskey, tobacco, and other supplies.

The
Algonquians, too, although they never smiled, seemed friendly enough. Perhaps
it was because they felt a lingering goodwill from the days of William Penn,
one colonial founder who had treated the Indians within his borders fairly.
Elizabeth saw that these naked-to-the-waist savages, with their deerskin
trousers and braided, feather-trimmed hair, seemed to feel an instant rapport
with Patrick, even though it was manifested only as a fleeting expression
across their bronze faces. One night as she looked across at the other
campfire, and saw her husband sitting between Colin and a silent, pipe-smoking
brave, she thought: He looks like an Indian himself!

The
owl had stopped hooting. The wind had died. Nothing but silence. Silence, and
her own sense of a vast wilderness stretching westward to a broad river called
the Mississippi. Someday Americans might build settlements that far west. Not
beyond it, of course. The regions beyond the Mississippi, stretching to a
fabled land called California, belonged to the French and Spanish. Still, she
felt almost dizzy with awe at the thought of the huge landmass stretching from
ocean to ocean.

She
must sleep. There was still hilly land ahead, the western foothills of the
Alleghenies. Perhaps tomorrow, as they had several times before in their
journey across the mountains, she and the two men would have to go forward on
foot, so that the struggling horses could draw the wagon up a steep ascent.

But
no matter. Tonight at supper Patrick had said that New Canterbury lay not more
than five days' travel ahead. She turned over on the narrow pallet and drifted
off to sleep.

Late
in the afternoon five days later, Patrick reined in the horses on the crest of
a low line of hills. Below them lay a gentle valley, heavily wooded, with the
silver gleam of a river showing here and there among the pines and broad-leaved
trees. In a clearing not far from the river stood a cluster of log houses, the
smoke from their chimneys rising straight up in the still air.

Elizabeth,
seated between the two men on the wagon's
plank seat, felt her heart quicken with
mingled hope and trepidation. She said, "New Canterbury?"

Patrick
answered, "It has to be."

"But
it is so small!" She could see only four houses and their outbuildings
scattered along three sides of the clearing.

"It
will grow," Patrick said confidently.

"Bound
to," Colin agreed, and Elizabeth noted with amusement that his speech had
already acquired a few Americanisms, just as hers and Patrick's had. He went
on, "That is all bottomland down there, fine for farming."

With
the whip handle, Patrick pointed down the valley to where broad fields—some
still bare, others already green with growing crops—had been carved out of the
woodland. "Our farmland must be down there someplace." He slapped the
reins across the horses' backs.