The Gardener (26 page)

Tom shook the reins, encouraging the plodding horses to pick up their pace.

*     *     *

Abigail tried her best to sit quietly, hands in her lap, and not chatter excitedly about all the new sights and sounds that surrounded them, as she was tempted to do. She was glad to note that Tom's mood lifted as the wagon left the familiar routes of New England and jolted westward on deeply rutted dirt roads that had once been Indian trails.

Unveiled from the smoke that covered the city like a gray blanket, the arching sky seemed bluer, the yellow sun hotter. She was soon grateful for the protection of the wagon's canvas cover. The dust stirred up by the horses made her cough, but she did not complain. She must not give Tom a reason to regret bringing her, although Abigail knew from his silence that he already did.

A surprising number of other settlers were heading the same direction and shouted out greetings as they passed. Some were veterans of the War for Independence, wearing scraps of old uniforms and boasting loudly of their exploits against the British. Others wore the somber clothes of Quakers, and revealed that they were moving northward from South Carolina to escape the sin of slavery. The travelers included a few French emigrants, their accents lending an exotic touch to the proceedings although the elegantly dressed men and women appeared woefully ill-prepared for the hard journey ahead of them.

At times Tom and Abigail slowed down to join the other groups of travelers for a day or two, to exchange news and enjoy companionship. When Tom dismounted to exchange news and information, Abigail realized she had never seen him so animated, talking with the other men, pulling out maps, and discussing climates and river sources.

The excitement of being on the trail almost made her forget that Tom had hardly spoken to her since leaving Cambridge. Abigail understood why he was angry. This journey was his dream, and she had jumped into it uninvited. But she would change his mind, Abigail thought with determination. Somehow, she would find a way to make him glad she had come.

As days passed, the more optimistic Abigail grew. The farther they forged into the wilderness, the more Tom seemed to forget his animosity. At times, he spoke to her quite normally, and smiled when she said something humorous or clever. Then, catching himself, he ducked his head quickly and turned away.

At such times, she remembered with a pang how courteous he had been in the early days, his occasional flashes of friendliness. Why was Tom fighting so hard against any affection he might feel for her? No matter what happened, she reminded herself, she must remain cheerful and hardworking. If she was patient, someday, somehow, she would break down the wall that separated them.

*     *     *

One night, as they lay under the wagon wrapped in blankets, Abigail watched his chest rise and fall in the moonlight. Once again she wondered if things would ever change between them. As usual, tonight Tom had turned away from her and fallen asleep almost immediately, dashing her hopes that he would ever treat her as a real wife.

She sighed and curled up under her own woolen blanket. Tomorrow would be another long day, and she needed her rest. No time for mooning over things she could not change, she thought. Just then, Tom rolled over and his tousled head came to rest against her shoulder. She held her breath, willing him not to roll away.

In his sleep, he shifted and snuggled closer, as if seeking the warmth of her body. Then he gave a soft sigh, and the next thing she knew, his arm was snaking around her waist.

Abigail clenched his broad shoulders, knowing she had won another battle. If only he would not resent her more for it.

Chapter Nineteen

To Abigail's relief, Tom did not speak of the event again, although things changed between them. In the dark she could almost convince herself that he loved her, even though during the day he remained as distant as ever. Abigail only knew that she loved him more powerfully, shamelessly, and hopelessly than before.

When they joined a group of emigrants around a campfire later that week, the two were welcomed, for all travelers were hungry for news. While the women ladled out food and washed the pewter plates, the men huddled to discuss the various companies selling land tracts and argued over which forts provided best protection from the Indians.

One rough-featured Virginian drawled that some companies did not even own the land they claimed to provide title to. “Might as well squat on it, 'stead of handing over hard-earned cash money,” he growled around the stem of his corncob pipe. “That's what me and the missus gonna do. It all come from the Injuns enyway, don't it? We got as much right to it as the Ohio Company.”

“As for me, I refuse to clear an acre unless I know for sure it is mine,” Tom said, his face serious. “I have spent too much of my life working for other men to risk losing my land because it isn't paid for. I’m heading to the Ohio Company Land Office first thing to buy my claim.”

There was a murmur of assent from some of the others in the group, their sober bearded faces flickering in the firelight. The rest seemed to side with the Virginian, who spat a brown wad of tobacco juice into the fire. “It's yore money,” he said, shrugging. “But you’d best keep yore gun handy, ‘cause you might have to fight for it anyway, either from an Injun or another squatter. In my book, a man who can't hold onto his land don't deserve it.”

Abigail had seen her husband's gleaming new longrifle under the seat in the wagon, but she hadn’t mentioned it to Tom. Now she wondered if he had ever handled a weapon before. Somehow, in spite of his fugitive status she suspected he hadn’t.

Not liking the conversation, she picked up her skirts and headed toward the knot of women. It was immediately apparent that a camaraderie had developed among them despite the variety of their backgrounds. A sturdy, weather-beaten farmwoman was scrubbing dishes alongside a fragile-looking Parisian woman whose soft hands and fine clothes showed inexperience with manual labor. Abigail wondered if the Frenchwoman would turn back when things got more difficult. Were the others were thinking the same about her?

Surreptitiously, she fumbled again her bodice for the packet Sarah had given her, as had become her habit, and felt the reassuring lump
. For your journey home, Abigail, just in case
. She dropped her hand.
No!
she told herself. From now on, her home was where Tom was.

*     *     *

For the next few days they journeyed with the other group, and some of the other women cheerfully volunteered to teach Abigail necessary skills. Gladly she took them up on their offers. She had never before cooked johnnycake over a campfire, or made soap from lye and ashes, or milked a recalcitrant goat. When the others laughed at her lack of experience, Abigail laughed with them and tried harder.

This was the grand adventure she had always hoped for. There was never time to be bored, with so many new experiences to savor. Abigail poured her soul into every day’s hard work, of which there was plenty. She learned to make and break camp quickly, to gather fuel for the fire, and even to help Tom put the animals in their harness. The first time, he gave her a surprised look, then moved aside to make room. After that, they worked companionably together, a team.

However, the Virginian’s cynical words reminded both of them that the dangers on the trail were not merely from wildlife, accident, or illness. In preparation for what lay ahead, Tom took his new longrifle and went off with the men, who showed him how to load it for small game. She heard a series of distant shots before Tom came back to camp, grinning and bearing a pair of large rabbits. Abigail swallowed hard, fetched the sharpest knife, and learned how to skin and gut them. Shuddering, she glanced at the longrifle he was cleaning and thought that in some ways men had the easier job.

Later, when Tom wasn’t looking, she pulled the longrifle out of the wagon and examined it, running her fingers along the long, smooth-grained wood and examining the intricate metal moving parts. Holding the heavy thing gave Abigail a sense of power she had never experienced before, although it frightened her as well. Unlike most of her friends in Cambridge, Abigail had not been raised around weapons. Her father, city-bred and a scholar, had never felt the need to own one, not even during the War of Independence, when it seemed every man slept with one next to his bed.

“I’d have been as like to blow my own head off with it as that of a lobsterback,” Miles Woodbury had said, chuckling. “I trusted the young hotheads to protect us if it came to that.”

Still inspecting Tom's longrifle, she heard footsteps approaching and quickly returned the weapon to its place, turning around and wiping her hands guiltily on her apron.

Tom came up to her, eyes narrowing. "What are you doing?"

She told him the truth. “It occurred to me that if it is important for you to know how to fire this thing, perhaps I should, too.”

“You’re a woman. What use have you for a musket?”

              Abigail looked on with frustration as he pulled a blanket over the longrifle, and for the first time in her life, when he went off later to practice shooting in the forest with his new friends, she resented having been born a female. They were both engaged in the same adventure, faced the same dangers. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to prepare the same as he? Then Abigail remembered she had changed Tom's mind about other matters. Perhaps she could change it about this.

*     *     *

              Although the smoke from the campfires saturated Abigail's clothing so she never felt quite clean, and she looked with horror at her broken nails and roughened skin, living on the trail was a welcome change from stultifying life in Cambridge. She quickly grew accustomed to waking up before the first light of dawn and cooking biscuits in the ashes while Tom tended the stock and readied for the day’s journey.

              He had warned her the trip would be tedious, but she found it just the opposite. Every day seemed fresh, the scenery ever-changing and beautiful, from forest to meadow to riverbank. And she had never seen such spectacular sunsets as those that seemed to set the western sky afire. As for her husband—she darted a look at Tom as he unhitched the horses and once again wondered at the power he had over her, to make her give up everything she had known and follow him into the wilderness. Where did that power come from? She was no romantic ninny, whatever her friend Sarah Osgood thought. Until Tom West had come along, Abigail would have been satisfied to spend her life as a spinster, attending to her father’s needs, despite her sense that something more lay out there.

It was not just Tom West’s height, nor his strength, that attracted her to him—not entirely. No, she thought, looking at him move about his chores. What attracted her was the innate kindness and decency that made him stop to help her, a complete stranger, while running across the dock for his life; that made him befriend an old woman on the ship in spite of his obvious desire to remain free from entanglements; that made him listen to her father lecture on arcane subjects for hours on end while never showing a sign of boredom; the troubled expression that darkened his face when he thought no one was looking, as if he were remembering some past tragedy he must carry alone, which made her yearn to care for him. Most of all, though, it was Tom's determination that drew her admiration. Never had she seen a man work so single-mindedly to achieve a goal.

Abigail smiled to herself. Maybe Tom West was not a gentleman but he could not hide the fact that, under his bursts of irritability, he was by nature a gentle man. She watched his big hands remove the horses’ harness and run carefully over the animals' coats, checking for burrs or injury. Cromwell followed at Tom's heels, tail wagging, and Tom absentmindedly reached down and scratched the dog behind the ears.

Abigail turned her head away and stirred the coarse cornmeal batter more vigorously. Listening to the low timbre of her husband's voice as he murmured to the animals, she ruefully admitted to herself that she was more in love with him than ever. She allowed herself the weakness of wondering if he would ever feel the same for her.

There were signs that the situation was not hopeless. Tom had already lost most of his maddening formality with her. Occasionally he threw her an approving look or a brief nod, and there was no more referring to her as the “lady of the house,” no pretense that he was no more to her than a humble servant. Clamping down his innate sense of self-worth up until now must have been like keeping burning coals under a damper. In the wilderness, his banked fires had come roaring into life. It was evident in the set of his shoulders and the confidence of his walk.

Abigail felt proud that she had kept her promise not to be a burden. She provided a cheerful extra pair of hands when needed, slogged through creeks uncomplaining, and washed out muddy clothes before slinging them across rocks to dry with raw, reddened fingers.

If only Sarah Osgood could see her now! Abigail looked ruefully at her scratched hands and broken nails. She was not as strong as the sturdy farmwomen who shared their journey, but at least she’d proved that neither was she a useless hothouse flower wilting when removed from shelter. And as for turning back …
never!
She’d never felt more vibrantly, intensely alive. Maybe she lacked Tom's love, but at least she had earned his respect, Abigail thought grimly. That would have to do.

              And so they toiled on their way until, just as they had nearly completed their journey, disaster struck.

*     *     *

              A few days earlier, Tom had stopped at the land office and, with the aid of maps the employee rolled out for him, selected a parcel on the west side of a river that curled through the southeastern part of the territory. When Tom and Abigail reached the banks of the river, however, the largest they had yet seen, they found no ferryman to carry them across. Tom frowned, and Abigail's palms grew wet as she contemplated the swirling white-capped water, the wide expanse between where they stood and the opposite shore.

They searched all day for a shallower place to cross, but to no avail. Finally Tom turned to her, his jaw set. “You do not have to cross. Some of the wagons behind us are sure to turn back. You can find a place with one of them.”

Abigail surreptitiously patted her bodice, felt once more the reassuring crackle of banknotes. She had never told Tom about the money because she knew he would insist that she use it when things grew difficult. If there was ever a time when the money would have come in handy, now was the time, to pay for her passage home. Still, her answer was never in doubt.

“No. I am crossing with you.”

“I'll go ahead and guide the horses, then,” Tom said, nodding as if her answer did not surprise him. His face looked calm, but worry darkened his blue eyes to near black. “You stay in the wagon. If it overturns, try to rescue as many of the boxes and barrels as you can.” Almost as an afterthought, he asked, over his shoulder, “Can you swim?”

What difference would it make if I couldn't?
she thought. They must cross the river. If she was not to turn back, there was no other choice. Her hand rested briefly on her belly. They had been traveling two and a half months, and although she wasn’t sure, she had a feeling …. But she couldn’t tell Tom, not yet. He had enough to worry about already.

She nodded, unable to trust her voice.

“Good.” Accepting her unspoken answer, he raised his whip and cracked it, calling to the horses. “Ho!”

The team plunged into the water. The wagon lurched and creaked down the slope, then, with a splash, it was floating like an unsteady raft.

“Steady, there! Steady!” Tom shouted. Once they lost their footing, the horses drifted further and further from the banks. The water, deep, swift and black, tugged at the wagon's sides. Now the huge animals began to swim, kicking out their legs, their powerful muscles fighting the current. The wagon bobbed and swung wildly, but it remained upright.

Abigail clung to the reins, tempted to squeeze her eyes shut, but concentrating fiercely instead on trying to keep the wagon upright. The truth was, however, there was little she could do: from now on, her fate was in the hands of the river and the horses.

It seemed to last forever. Then she heard another loud shout from Tom, heard the cracking of the whip, and the tired horses were struggling up the other bank. She jumped into cold water that reached halfway up her legs, and helped Tom push the wagon up the muddy slope. Abigail knew she was too weak for her efforts to make much difference, but she could not sit back and not help.

She wished she could rip off the annoying skirts that clung to her limbs. Her back muscles screamed with pain under the weight of the stubborn wagon, which pitched and threatened to roll backward and crush them both. Finally, with a grunt from Tom and a final push from his powerful shoulders, the wagon cleared the water, and Abigail fell to the ground.

She lay there for a while before regaining strength to push herself to her knees. To her surprise, as her eyes opened she saw Tom kneeling next to her, watching her with an expression she had never seen. As she rose to her feet, he took her by the forearms and steadied her.