A Wild Yearning (48 page)

"I was the one who saved you from all that."

Her head snapped up and her eyes changed suddenly from tears to fury. "Oh? The way I remember it, Tyler Savitch, what you did was help yourself to my virtue one afternoon in the Falmouth woods and then hand me over to Nat the next day with the condition that if he didn't like me he could always ship me back—like a cracked teacup or a stocking with a hole in it!"

"Are you going to punish me now for seducing you and then rejecting you? Is that what this is?" He emitted a harsh, choking laugh. "I suppose I deserve it but, Jesus, Delia..."

She pressed her face into his neck, her chest heaving with suppressed sobs. "No, no, no..." Leaning back, she clung to his shirt, her legs no longer able to support her. "I only mean that Nat doesn't deserve to be deserted now. Although for you, to be with you, I might even be able to do that. But the
children,
Ty. Between their ma dying and me disappearing for five months, Meg and Tildy are terrified of being left alone again. I set out to make them love me, to depend on me, and they do now, even Meg. Think what it would do to them if I just up and vanished out of their lives. Those things I told you on the beach that day still hold true. I don't know if I can walk away from Nat and his children and the promises I made. Not and continue to live with myself."

His hands moved up her back, his fingers becoming entangled in her hair. "But what about me? What about the promises you made to me? You're my
wife."

"But I married Nat first and—"

"No! You're mine!" He sucked in
a
deep, ragged breath. "All right. Forget about the fact that you managed to get yourself married to the both of us—"

"That wasn't my f—"

"Let's discuss love," he went on inexorably, rising anger roughening his voice again as he thumped her in the chest with a stiff finger to punctuate his points. "I love you. You love me. We love each other. Now you tell me. Where do Nat and his girls fit into that little equation?"

She slapped his hand aside. "That hurts."

"Ah, God!" He spun around, flinging his head back. He stared at the sky, his chest heaving. Then his head fell forward and he threw himself back to lean against the palisade. He shoved his fingers through his hair, then let his hands fall helplessly to his sides. "I'm sorry, Delia, but you're scaring me to death. I can't lose you."

Her hands gripped together and she swayed on her feet. "Oh, Ty... What are we going to do?"

His voice came to her, barely a whisper. "Come away with me, Delia. Come away with me. Right now. Tonight."

She squeezed her eyes shut, although she couldn't stop the tears. Silence hung long and heavy between them. She could hear his ragged breathing, beneath her own choking sobs.

She opened her eyes to tell him she couldn't do it; she couldn't go away with him no matter how much her heart and soul and body yearned to—but the sight of his face robbed her chest of breath and sent her heart shattering into pieces at her feet.

He hadn't been able to hold back the tears any longer. They filled his eyes and rolled silently down his cheeks. "God..." he sobbed. He turned his head aside, ashamed. But the words tore out of him, rough and raw. "Don't choose them over me, Delia. I'm
begging
you. Come away with me... Be my wife, Delia. Be my... wife..."

She would have torn out her heart and presented it to him with her own hands. She would have died for him. She opened her mouth to tell him she would do it, she would leave Nat and the girls and she would go away with him. What did her honor matter when she loved him so?

But then she remembered the frightened sound of Tildy's voice, begging her to make a promise never to leave again. And Meg, making bargains with God and kissing her on the cheek. Calling her Ma...

And she couldn't do it.

"Ty, I need more time to think."

He pushed off the wall and brushed past her, striding away so fast he was almost to the ladder before she realized what he was doing.

"Ty!" She ran after him, just managing to grip the sleeve of his shirt. "Ty, don't... Where are you going?"

He kept his face turned away from hers. "Leaving you alone to think. To decide whether you love me or not."

"You
know
I love you!"

"Do I?" He swung around, impaling her with his eyes. They glittered at her, hard with bitterness, wet with pain. "Do I?" he demanded again, jerking his arm from her grasp.

And then he was gone.

"Whoa, there..." Nat Parkes pulled back on the yoke of the borrowed ox team and the stoneboat slid to a graceful stop. Delia stepped off the flat, runnerless sled, her eyes on the blackened ruins of a chimney that thrust up like a pointing finger amid scorched beams and charred wood.

"I raked through it all last fall," Nat said, noting the direction of her gaze. "I was able to salvage a few pots, but that was about it."

"Hildegarde was saved!" Tildy exclaimed, clutching the Indian doll tightly to her chest as she scooted off the end of the sled. "Hildegarde didn't burn to death."

"That's only 'cause you took her to school with you the day the Abenakis raided," Meg said petulantly. "I wish I had thought to bring my top."

"Your da'll carve you a new top," Delia said, forcing a smile. "Won't you, Nat?"

Nat grunted. Delia looked at his wan, lined face and, to the despair and wrenching sense of loss that was squeezing her own heart on this beautiful spring morning, there was added a piercing melancholy. She thought sadly of Mary's things—the lantern clock, the sampler, the spinning wheel. They were all Nat had had left of Mary and their ten years together and now they, too, were gone forever.

She laid her hand on his arm. "I'm so sorry, Nat."

He shrugged, pulling away from her. "It can be rebuilt now that spring is here. Matter of fact, Colonel Bishop is organizing a raising bee for us next week." He walked back to the stoneboat and began unloading a heavy iron cauldron. "Meantime there's work to be done. I'll get you girls started on the sugaring—Meg, if you'll bring along those sap pails and spiles —then I'll begin on the fields. Seems like the earth spewed out enough stones to choke a whale this winter."

Winter frosts always heaved stones and boulders to the surface of the fields and before any planting could be done, the big ones, in the words of The Maine farmers, "had to be twitched out." The flat-bottomed stoneboats slid easily over a ground made soft and soggy by rapidly melting snow, and were especially useful for hauling away the rocks cast up by winter.

The time for stone-clearing coincided with sugaring time. The sap flowed just right for tapping in the big maples when the nights were still cold enough to freeze sharply and the days warm enough to thaw freely. Nat, with patience and even an occasional smile, showed Delia how the sugaring was done. He chose a big maple, over twelve inches in diameter, and bored a hole with an auger into the sunny side of the trunk, three feet from the ground. Then a spile, or spout, was tapped into the hole and a pail was hung over the end of the spile.

"I'll build you all a big fire in the clearing for the cauldron," Nat said. "When the pails get full, you and the girls can haul them back on the hand sledge and empty them into the kettle." He grinned at her. "There ought to be maple syrup enough to swim in."

Delia tried to return his smile, but she just couldn't manage
it.

Nat nodded. "Well then..." He waved vaguely over his shoulder. "I'll be over yonder. Should you need me."

Delia nodded back at him. They stood there staring and nodding at each other until Delia, feeling foolish, turned away.

There was a strained awkwardness between them this morning, perhaps because they had never finished their conversation of the night before. When she had returned from that devastating meeting with Ty, Delia couldn't bear looking at Nat, let alone discussing their future as husband and wife. She had pleaded exhaustion and retired to a small hay pallet in one corner of the shed, but she knew Nat had noted her reddened eyes and tear-swollen face and he must have wondered at their cause. But it wasn't in Nat to pry and so he had said nothing. In the end neither had she.

It seemed Delia's very bones ached with sadness that morning and her stomach echoed with a hollow emptiness that was like a hunger which could never be satisfied. It was as if someone she loved dearly had died. What had died was the idyllic love she and Ty had shared. No matter whether she decided to stay with Nat and his girls as her conscience insisted, or to disappear with Ty back into the wilderness as her heart pulled her—whatever she did, the result would be misery.

She couldn't imagine living out the rest of her days without Ty. Once, she had thought it would be enough to wake every morning with the chance of seeing his face that day. But that was before she had awakened of a morning to see his beloved face beside hers on the pillow. His eyes, heavy lidded with sleep, had glowed with love, and she had pressed her lips to his beard-roughened cheek. She had stretched and felt the pleasant ache between her thighs, legacy of the night before, a tender reminder of his rapturous lovemaking. A dream had come true for her, an impossible dream. Ty loved her and had made her his wife. How could she ever give up that dream?

And yet... yet...

Yet there was Tildy, awaiting the first drop of sap from the end of the spile, a look of fierce concentration mixed with excited anticipation animating her face. Just then it appeared and she squealed with delight. "It's flowing, Delia! The sap is flowing!
Now
can we have some maple candy?"

"Patience, little puss," Delia said, laughing helplessly, yet feeling close to tears as well. "The candy will be a time in coming yet." Her eyes met Meg's and they shared a smile.

Two spots of color, as bright as polished apples, dotted the young girl's cheeks, and her brown eyes glistened like two dark chestnuts. The pinched look was gone from her mouth which curved into a smile. Delia had never seen Meg Parkes look so happy, so at peace.

These children, Delia thought. How can I bear to hurt these children?

She looked upriver toward Ty's clearing. She felt certain he was there right now, raking through the ruins of his cabin. Ruins, she thought. Everything was in ruins. Their homes, their lives. Their love.

Delia was wrong.

Ty was ten miles away from the burned rubble of his cabin. He moved through the forest with the silent toe-in walk of the Indian. What he had left in the world he carried with him—his rifle, shot pouch and powder horn, a tomahawk and hunting knife. In a small haversack over his shoulder he carried some food and a change of buckskins. All of his healing herbs and most of his instruments had been lost in the fire that burned his cabin, but those that he'd salvaged he brought with him.

In his heart he carried memories.

If I am never to have you again after this night, this moment, you will remain wife of my soul. Keeper of my heart.

He had meant those words when he had said them, that night of their marriage as they stood outside his wigwam and watched the northern lights. But he never thought he'd be called upon to prove it so soon. Or that it would be so hard.

In the beginning he had almost lost her for fear of loving her. Then he had conquered his fear and let himself love her, only to wind up losing her in the end. But at least this way the loss was of his own choosing. Even in the midst of all his own anger and pain, he had seen in her tormented face last night how her heart was being torn between her love for him and her tender regard for Nat's motherless children. He realized then he had in his power the ability to give her a gift worthy of his great love for her. He would spare her the pain and anguish of having to make an impossible choice by making it for her.

He would leave her.

At the moment he was heading northeast, following the Kennebec because the snow was thinner here, where the sun penetrated more easily through the thick bower of trees. A false euphoria drove him along, the relief from having made and then carried out a dreaded decision. Pain was there, but it was deep within him, like a bruise on the bone. It throbbed below the surface of his consciousness. He hoped that by the time it became full-fledged agony he would be so far away that the temptation to return would be easier to resist. Lord knows, he thought, with a hollow, inner laugh, he was not a man made for self-sacrifice.

He was tempted now, but he wouldn't go back to Norridgewock. The memories of Delia and their love would be too hurtful there, the way back to her too easily traveled. He would follow the river for a while longer and then strike out west. Assacumbuit had once told him that the land the Yengi called America stretched west all the way to the edge of the world, to another ocean where the sun slept at night. He thought he would just keep on walking until he found the end of the world. There he could be alone with his thoughts of her, his dreams. His memories.

He stopped where the Kennebec forked, although he wasn't the least bit tired. Several times, when Ty was a boy, Assacumbuit had made him run for a day and night without water or rest. Once, when he was twelve, he had been sent naked into the forest with nothing, not even a knife, and he had emerged a week later, clothed and so well fed he had brought his father back meat as a gift. But then, when he was six, he had marched from Kittery to Quebec with a pack as big as he was strapped to his back. His body had been toughened on that march, and so had his mind. He had lost loved ones before and survived, again and again.

And I'll survive this, he told himself. I'll have to. A man, he had been taught over and over by life, endured what he had to and went on.

He sat on a rock at the river's edge, his rifle cradled in his lap. The sun was a warm caress against his face. A strong breeze rippled the water and played the tree boughs like harps. It carried with it a smell of grease and poorly cured hides.

Someone was coming.

It was two people actually and whoever they were, they made little noise. But Abenaki warriors would have made no noise it all. They had to be timber beasts then. The question was whether they were English and probably friendly, or French and possibly not so friendly.

With slow nonchalance Ty primed and loaded his rifle. He laid it across his lap, his finger curled loosely around the trigger, and waited.

They emerged around a bend in the river five minutes later— Increase Spoon and his girl-squaw. She was practically bent double, enveloped by the pile of hides on her back. Increase didn't carry a thing except for his rifle. He grinned when he saw Ty, showing black gaps in his teeth.

"Ye be huntin' purdy far from home, aren't ye, Doc?" he called out when he got within hailing distance.

Ty waited until the old trapper had pulled abreast of him. "Looks like you had yourselves a good winter there, Increase," he said, nodding at the pile of beaver furs. The young girl stared stoically ahead, but Ty could see that the weight of the pack was causing the tumpline to cut deeply into her forehead. At least she was no longer suffering from the effects of scurvy.

"We be on our way to Mrs. Susannah's trading post up t' Falmouth way. Did ye hear she was getting hersel' hitched up?"

"No, I hadn't. Who's she marrying?" Ty asked, not really caring.

Increase shrugged. "Some feller firm Wells. A cooper, he be." He combed his beard with his fingers as he studied Ty hard, a look of confusion knotting his dirt-pitted face. "Ye know I was t' deliver a message t' ye. Now what—ayup, I remember what 't was now. Nat Parkes never did get hissel' kilt and scalped by the Injuns. 'Twas some other feller."

Ty sighed. "I got that message. Thanks anyhow, Increase."

Increase noticed Ty's eyes on his squaw. "Yon Nesoowa's been right as rain since ye had a look at her that day at Falmouth Neck, Doc. I kept her pie-eyed on spruce beer all winter, didn't I, gel?" He smiled fondly at the young Indian girl and she looked shyly at Ty, shifting the heavy pile of furs further up onto the broad part of her back.

"Couldn't you at least share the burden with your woman?" Ty asked.

"Huh?"

"Help her to carry that load of peltry."

"What for?"

Ty sighed again.

Increase wet his lips. "Ye wouldn't by chance got any corn squeezing's along wi' ye?"

"No, sorry." Ty removed the pipe he had stuck through the band around his fox-skin cap and fished in the haversack at his feet for his squirrel skin tobacco pouch. He packed the bowl with the aromatic leaves. "I can offer you a smoke though."

"Kinnikinnik?"

Ty shook his head. "Plain tobacco."

Increase looked disappointed, but he took the proffered pipe. Like the Indians, the trapper carried fire with him, hanging from his hunting strap in the form of a smoldering punk enclosed within two large clamshells and wrapped in a deerskin bag. He used the tinder now to light the pipe.

"Ye know, I'm beginnin' t' feel like a postrider," he said around the bit in his mouth. "What wi' all them messages I been carryin' backwards and forwards. You and the Corn'l Bishop an' now some feller over t' Penobscot has got me runnin' every whichaway."

"What message are you carrying now?" Ty asked, mainly to keep the conversation going.

"Boston done sent a bang-boat up the Penobscot Bay couple weeks back. She leveled the mission at Castine with her cannon an' managed t' kill the old black robe, Sebastien Rale, in the process. Now them Abenakis over thataway are scalpin' mad. They've taken up the hatchet, all official-like, after a big powwow of all the tribes, and they're buildin' themselves scalin' ladders so's even the forts won't be safe."