Shadowbrook (32 page)

If the brown robe tried to tell Lantak he would not get his second payment of two hundred livres because the rain put out the fires, he would kill him. Better, he would kill him anyway. Best would have been to kill Uko Nyakwai. By the time he realized who it was who had set the trap for him in the paddock, it was too late to get a dear path for his gun or his tomahawk. Now—Lantak glanced quickly back over his shoulder—he could no longer see the horse carrying the Red Bear. The rain was so heavy he could see little beyond the length of his arm. And the horses were tiring. If more whites came after them on fresh horses it would be bad.

These thoughts were so much in Lantak’s mind that he did not see what was ahead of them until one of the other braves drew level and spoke. “There, beside the road.” He pointed a short distance ahead. “Two blacks, a squaw and a man. I will get their scalps.”

The brave started to turn his horse toward the man and woman kneeling in the bordering woodland. Lantak watched, uninterested. Then, after a few more strides, he saw who the woman was and he remembered the singing. “Wait!” he called out. “Do not touch the squaw. She has a spirit.” He glanced up at the sky. Perhaps it was she who had sung the rain into being. “Kill the man if—No, don’t kill him. Take him captive.” It was this man or no one. Despite the presence of the squaw who had the spirit, Lantak’s need drove him. “He is big. He will endure many caresses.” The brave didn’t turn around, but he raised his hand to signal that he had heard.

Quent had started to slow the roan some ways back, well before Lantak and his renegades drew level with the pair of mountain ash that marked the path to the glade. By the time he made the turn that led to the clearing and falls, the Indians were too far ahead to see where he went.

He thundered forward, urging the horse to go as fast as it could on the narrow path, but he was still short of the clearing when he slid off the animal’s back. Quent turned the roan around. “Go on, boy. Go on home. You’ve earned it.” More than likely the gelding would find his way back to the paddock, or whoever John sent to round up the animals would find him between here and there. John …
Sweet Christ, it wasn’t possible. When he thought of all the destruction that had been wrought on this day, Quent felt sick. To imagine that John would have caused such havoc made no more sense now than it had earlier.

Nicole was safe, though. There was no sign of any hostile’s passage on the path to the glade, and when he got to the clearing it looked exactly as he’d left it. His eyes examined every tree and every square of moss before he left the protection of the encircling trees. Thank God for the empty glade. Thank God for the rain. There had been no trouble here. At least not this day.

Quent wasn’t sure what had driven him to bring Nicole here. It had seemed so important, but now he couldn’t rightly say why. He’d lost one love in this glade, and almost lost another. There was a spirit here. Shoshanaya had called it a
nawa,
a ruling spirit. She said it was benign and wished them no ill. She was wrong. I’m done with you,
nawa.
You’re a deceitful witch. This place looks like paradise on earth, but it lies.

He made his way to the stream, seeing nothing that caused alarm. He was so wet from the downpour he didn’t feel the water of the stream as he waded to the center, only the slight resistance of the swiftly moving flow. He checked the clearing and the surrounding forest one last time before he drew a deep breath and sank beneath the surface. It took some effort to swim against the current, but not a great deal. Another, stronger effort was required when he breached the falls, then he was at the mouth of the cave.

He used both hands to give himself purchase on the cave’s edge and pulled his body inside. “Nicole. Don’t be frightened. It’s me.” There was no answer. “Nicole. It’s Quent. Where are you?”

He blinked the water out of his eyes and pushed his hair off his forehead. “Nicole …” He could see plainly now. The cave was empty. It couldn’t be—she’d promised—but she was not there. “Nicole!” This time he shouted, and his voice echoed back to him from the depths of the underground passage. He hesitated, unsure whether to go back to the glade or deeper into the cave. Without light it would be pointless to try and track her in the endless blackness of the passage ahead, but she could be nowhere else. Nicole couldn’t swim. She paddled a bit, but not well enough to get herself out of the cave and through the falls and into the clearing. She had to have gone deeper into the tunnel. But why? God-rotting hell, who knew why women did anything?

Quent battled his feelings of foreboding, his terror that the
nawa
had won again and taken from him the most precious thing he had. Rage boiled up inside him. What are you angry at, fool? He asked himself. A spirit? You can’t outwit spirits. Deal with what you can control. Nicole was frightened. You weren’t here. She couldn’t swim well enough to get out through the falls so she
walked into the depths of the cave. But a few feet in that direction it was black as pitch. Blacker.

Quent looked around, studying the rock walls. Years ago he and Shoshanaya had hidden tinder, and a lantern here, behind a stone. Which one?

Quent thought for a moment. So much of that time had become a blank to him. He’d made it so, otherwise the grief would have killed him. Ah yes, the one that was shaped like a tepee. It was loose, and if you pried at it a bit … He used his dirk and the stone came forward. There was a small opening behind it, and in it the lantern and flint and tinder box he and Shoshanaya had put there a lifetime before.

He struck a spark and coaxed the wick to kindle. There wasn’t much oil. Enough for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Sometimes they’d made love in this cave, and lingered until it grew dark outside. That’s what the lantern had been for, so he could see her smile when she stretched out her arms to him.

“Nicole.” He called her name again and waited. There was no reply. Quent strode forward. In moments the lantern was the only light and everything behind him was darkness.

Before he’d gone a quarter of the way in the tunnel, he found Nicole kneeling on the rock floor, upright, eyes closed and arms loose at her side. She didn’t react to the light of the lantern. “Nicole! Thank God. I was—Why didn’t you answer? Nicole …”

She did not seem to hear him. Quent put down the lantern and went toward her. When he touched her she shuddered, and finally opened her eyes. He drew her upright into his arms and she made no protest, but she did not melt against him the way she had earlier. “I was so worried,” he scolded, stroking her hair. “Didn’t you hear me calling you? I told you to stay where I left you. Why did you come into the tunnel?”

“I was following the light.”

“There is no light. Not until you’ve gone a league and a half, and then you’re out by Swallows Children. It’s very dangerous if you don’t know—Nicole, I was so … I thought I’d lost you.”

He gave up being angry and murmured the last words against the top of her head. She made no reply, unmoving in his arms. He decided it was the shock that had made her forget that back there, in the glade, before Sampson came crashing through, everything had changed between them. No matter; later, when things were normal again, he’d remind her. “It’s all right now,” he soothed. “It’s raining, pouring in fact. The fires are out and the Indians rode off the way they came. We’ve got to get back to the big house. I’ll be needed.”

“I followed the light,” she repeated. Quent pretended not to hear.

“Some half part of the wheat crop is destroyed.” Ephraim avoided meeting the eyes of the forty or so people looking at him. “And all the hay. The sawmill is burned to the ground. Most of the saws are completely useless; one, High Josiah, may be salvageable.” All the saws had come from England with his father and all had names. High Josiah was the pendulum saw that hung on leather thongs from the topmost rafters of the mill. There were no blades anywhere in the colonies to equal those that had been ruined. He’d have to send to London for replacements, and build a new sawmill to house them. It would take upwards of a year before they were back to the place they’d been just this morning, before the disaster of this day. And all these poor devils, white and black alike, gathered here in the great hall of the big house as if it were the church Lorene tried to make it Sunday mornings, they were all staring at him as if they expected some pronouncement that would make the horror of it disappear.

God-cursed savages. May they burn in eternal hellfire. Every one of them. Even the one he’d thought he couldn’t do without. Mostly her. He thought of her dainty bones, picked clean of flesh long since, lying in the earth up there at Squirrel Oaks. It was Lorene who had insisted a Potawatomi whore be buried with the dead of the Patent. For Cormac’s sake. And by then it was Lorene who truly grieved for her. Not him, not then and not now. He hated her.

It was because of Pohantis that his youngest son, the best he’d produced, was someone other than the man he’d been bom to be. If it hadn’t been for her, for the fire she kindled in both of them, him and Lorene, Quent wouldn’t have been sent to live with the Indians every summer during his boyhood, wouldn’t have turned out more red than white. Ephraim tried to push the thoughts away. The household, men and women, slaves and tenants, his flesh and blood, all of them were waiting for him to say something that would give this terrible day some meaning, make it something they could understand.

This ought to be the moment when I tell them Quent’s in charge, that he’ll take over the Patent when I’m gone and they’ll all be out from under John’s stupid, bloody fist. They respect Quent. Hellfire, most of them love him. He could say it right now, but God help him, he dare not. No matter what Lorene said, he could not be sure that Quent had changed.

Damn the past. Damn the Potawatomi for making Quent more like them than his own kind. Look at him, standing over there in the shadows. Talking to one of the slaves as if she were an equal. Granted, it’s Sally Robin and she’s the equal of any woman ever bom. Hell, the better of most. But I would never allow her to know I think that. Quent lets it show. As if the coloreds, red or black, are the same as whites. Stupid to blame the Indians. It’s my doing. Because of Pohantis, and Lorene, the way we all were back then. Damn the past, bury it in everlasting hell. It’s now that counts. Quent’s wearing buckskins again; he’s got his long gun and
his tomahawk. Could be he’s simply prepared for more trouble … But I know he’s bloody well planning something, and that it’s not good for the Patent. Or at least, that the Patent doesn’t come first.

Ephraim shifted his focus to John, who was sneaking curious glances at his brother when he thought no one would notice. Ephraim caught something in John’s eyes. Pure hatred. He felt the weight of it all. So much loss and grief. So many wrong turnings. And God help him, standing here this long was killing him. His arms were on fire and the two sticks felt as if they might be flaming swords. He didn’t have much longer, he knew that. This business would likely speed the end. No bad thing that; he was tired, ready to go. And the sticks weren’t going to hold him up much longer. He’d best get on with it.

“Ephraim,” Lorene appeared at his shoulder. Her voice was a murmur, loud enough only for him. “Let me tell them to bring you a chair.”

“No. I’m fine. Go on with your business.”

Lorene and the big house slaves were busy. As if doing would keep them from feeling. Kitchen Hannah had stirred up her fire hours before, the moment she knew there was trouble. Now there were bannocks and biscuits and salt-rising bread hot from the bake oven built into the wall beside the hearth. Stacks of johnnycakes had come off the griddle stone. Lorene was overseeing the passing of the food along with mugs of ale. “Johnnycakes for the slaves as well,” she’d told Runsabout a few minutes before. “And ale if they like. Buttermilk if they prefer.” The blacks were as soot-blackened and blaze-weary as the rest.

They were all there, Lorene noted, everyone who lived on the Patent except for the Quakers up at Do Good, who were too far away and doubtless didn’t yet know what had happened. The whites sat up front and the slaves were crowded into the back of the room the way they were most Sundays when she conducted services. But everyone was watching Ephraim with a look they never turned on her—as if he held the answers to the meaning of the senseless slaughter, the devastation. Not all. Ely Davidson was staring straight ahead. Lorene moved to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “How’s that bandage keeping, Ely?”