~*~
I woke in the dead of the night a few hours after Dr. Prescott had left. There were no noises in the house. Even through the dark, I saw color bloom on her cheeks—light cherry blossom pink. I cried and smiled. “I love you. I’ll make it all better.” I nodded as I promised again.
Looking just past Hannah, I saw Mrs. Jones sleeping on a chair. She laid her head on the bed, and had an arm protectively around Hannah’s waist.
I left the bed, checked on my mother and a clock that let me know it was just after midnight, then crept out of the house. Mathew’s horse was no longer tethered to the usual spoke.
I walked to the barn. With every step, I saw her, over and over again. Lying so pale against the frosty ground, her hands had been beside her head as if she had kept fighting even during her unconscious state. She had been so colorless, except for all that blood dried on her body. So much blood. The black blood, the white frost, the gray sorrow.
I would make it all better.
In the barn, I stored many tools on large shelves that reached up to the ceiling. I had to climb some of those shelves, but within a few seconds I drew down a tomahawk and my father’s long rifle. I hadn’t thought of bringing a candle to see, but my eyes adjusted to the coal-colored night that spilled into the barn through the open door. I checked the rifle first. It needed a good cleaning. It was over a month now since I’d fired it, the day I’d met Jacque. I winced from the remembrance.
The gunpowder was dry; I could tell from smelling the horn. The powder singed my nose, and I sneezed, then coughed until a tear escaped my eye. Angrily I threw the moisture away with the back of my hand, then fingered the tomahawk with my eyes burning. Both the tomahawk and Kentucky rifle were gifts from the same Mohawk family.
When I was a young girl I’d claimed Daganawida, an Indian boy and my closest friend, as my husband. His father and mother merely laughed as I dragged the tall boy around every time I would see him. His father and my father had become friends in Boston, since Daganawida’s father was educated in Dartmouth, then Harvard, where he’d met my father. It was when I was six and ten that Daganawida no longer needed prodding to be with me, play with me in the forest. He gave me the tomahawk as a future wedding present. It was lovely with turquoise-colored leather thongs decorating the handle and a hawk’s feather dangling from the butt, but the blade itself was where the craftsman had accomplished setting a Celtic band with an eagle’s face. It was our two tribes coexisting, Daganawida had told me. He’d embraced me with a chuckle, lamenting how I’d finally won him over. His heart was mine.
His body and spirit were not. The following day Daganawida’s father came to mine with the long rifle, a gift to pay for Daganawida’s forced rejection. His father told my da that less than a generation ago he would have approved of the match, but with so much hostility between the Iroquois and English, he would only worry over our marriage. Daganawida was rushed north, far from me. I never saw him or his family again.
The tomahawk needed sharpening, and in the dark I found the stone that I used for the scythes during harvest. I grated at the ax, and found that within twenty minutes time I had a lethal weapon and a well-oiled musket. Laying the rifle on a counter, I let my fingers dance with the Celtic weaving, then the sharp blade of my tomahawk.
I threw it against the barn’s door, then picked it from the wood.
I had been thinking only of my sister while I was with her, but now, as I stood in the barn, checking the tomahawk’s blade again, I thought about the man who had raped my sister. It had to have been her lieutenant. No one else knew where she had been. He had lured her to him, like a monster would its prey.
While fingering the thin edge of the ax, I vowed to never let anything happen to my sister ever again. I would never let my sister out of my sight. I would protect her constantly. I couldn’t let anything or anyone hurt her.
The blade of the ax sliced into my thumb. Pleased and bleeding, I walked to the barn’s door and was stopped by something: a phantasm. One moment the door was empty, and the next Jacque was there holding me, clutching me, whispering in my ear.
“I came as soon as I got news, chér. I’m so sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for what has happened.”
“Am I dreaming?” I whispered into his shoulder, wrapping my arms around Jacque’s neck instantly, even while holding the small ax.
He pulled away enough so I could see him shake his head as his fingers dug into my shoulders and back.
“You’re really here? I’m not dreaming this?”
“Non, chér. I’m here with you.”
My grip on the ax loosened, and I let the tomahawk fall so I could plant myself more firmly against Jacque’s shoulder, his body. His heart hammered against my breasts.
“It is you.” My voice trembled with the pronouncement.
“I’m so sorry, chér. I should have—”
I looked up at him. “No. No. Don’t blame yourself. Please. You did nothing—”
“Exactement. Only today did I try to search for records of Lieutenant—”
“Don’t say his name. Please.” I placed my fingers over his perfect lips. He wrapped his fingers around my hand and kissed my fingers then my palm. His nose skimmed the inside of my wrist. “What did you find? It was him that hurt my sister?”
“Yes. He came back to Boston bragging of his . . . actions.” Jacque paused and let me sway against him, feeling too exhausted to stand on my own anymore, but he continued. “I found little about the man, other than he’s not much of an officer. He commissioned his rank from a wealthy uncle who actually is a decent military man—a major in the Troupe de le Marines. But this man that has hurt your sister, this person is not a good soldier and many of his men call him the Liar Lieutenant, but that was as far as my investigation got before I received the letter from Mathew.”
“Letter from Mathew?”
“He wrote to me as soon as he could, asking if I could be of service during your family’s time of need. He asked that I place . . . that man under arrest.”
“Did you?”
Jacque nodded.
I embraced him. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me to have you here.”
From my emotions, from our hold onto each other, from the moment, whatever it was, something overpowered him and he walked backwards, stepping onto the tomahawk. He still had one hand on my arm when he reached down and retrieved the ax. In the dark I could only make out his silhouette and the ax’s silver gleam that radiated from the sliver of a moon and the dampened stars. But even with that little of light I saw his black brow arch.
“Protection,” I said simply, answering the unasked question.
He lifted me with one arm around the back of my waist, while squeezing me to his stomach. My feet dangled in the air as he walked to the counter. After placing the tomahawk by the rifle, his free hand curved around my cheek as he set me back on my own two feet. “Ah, your rifle.”
“I won’t let him hurt her again.”
He nodded. “Mathew couriered the letter to me, for me to be here, while he organizes a group of men to assist him to argue that . . . that man be charged and tried by your colony. I found the man and placed him under arrest easy enough. The British Army I do not have much respect for, but once I spoke of what he had done to your sister, he was jailed right away. Mathew is still arguing for a change of venue.”
Jacque was referring to yet another mandate from the Intolerable Acts that ensured that the redcoats were to be tried back in England, even though the crime was committed here in Massachusetts. My sister’s rapist would also be jailed amongst his own military, not set in a colonial jail.
“Mathew,” Jacque kept saying his name as if just the word itself punctured his tongue, “will have an audience with Governor General Gage himself tomorrow. But already I have heard that your governor general is seriously considering trying the man himself. Gage does not completely agree with the law, and I think he will listen and do as M
athew will ask. Mathew has done so much for Hannah.”
Indeed. And I was grateful for all Mathew was doing for my family, for my sister, for me. Very appreciative. Yet . . . how I ached to rest my head against Jacque’s strong chest. I didn’t question Jacque’s knowledge of Gage’s inner thoughts. I trusted Jacque, felt safe within his arms.
“Mathew is such a good man, Violet.”
I nodded. “But I wanted you here.”
He sucked in a sail-ful of air and looked to the barn’s ceiling. He kept swallowing, then, dropped his head and kissed me. I had been numb since I’d first read Hannah’s note this morning, but Jacque’s kiss exploded into me and all my emotions erupted. Tears spilled out of my eyes and felt bitterly cold. I needed his heat to invade my mouth, to find some kind of balance within my body, within my soul.
He lifted me off the ground, and it wasn’t a thought at all, but I wrapped my legs around his hips.
He stopped kissing me. Looking down at me, he whispered, “I love you.”
In the dark, with only the blade-side of a scythe of a moon in the inky sky, I took in his face. Surprisingly, I saw him well—his strong straight nose flared, and those piercing yet glowing blue eyes of his. Oh, those eyes, like blue fire pouring into my soul.
He adjusted his hold on me, and somehow held me with only one arm as his free hand traced the tiny chain that ran down my chest.
“You wear it?”
“Yes. It’s over my heart.”
“Oui. It is over your heart.”
Then, I kissed him with my lips pushing into his, my tongue finding its way into his mouth. He moaned and walked me to a wall, my body learning all he could offer me. He suddenly stopped.
“Merde,” he whispered, and gently released me to the ground. “I will make this right, Violet. I will make this right for you.”
Then he vanished. I must have blinked, for he was gone. Only, my blue gem stood on the outside of my shirt, and I had several hundred pound notes in my hand.
“Violet? That you?” Jonah walked into the barn’s open door.
I looked about the barn, thinking that I was surly going mad, except for the money in my hand and my body’s fire slowly dwindling. Blinking, I looked around one more time.
“Violet?” Jonah’s voice was soft as he touched my arm.
My eyes finally focused on him. He flinched as if he were looking at a Heron Indian warrior, instead of me.
He cautiously tilted his head down toward me. “Violet, let’s go back to the house.” Jonah’s hand smoothed my shoulder.
I nodded and folded the money into my pocket. The tomahawk was neatly placed beside the rifle, and I placed the rifle back up on the shelf, but gripped the ax and walked toward Jonah.
He swallowed.
“Protection,” I said, not at all recognizing my voice. It was deeper, rougher, and detached.
“Good thinking, Violet, girl. Good thinking.” His voice was tempered with down-like comfort. “We’ll go back to the house now.”
He guided me out of the barn with an arm looped around my shoulders. “I think it’s good to protect yourselves, Violet. I really do. Luckily, Miss Hannah doesn’t need any more protection from that man.”
“He’s in custody. I know.”
“How you know that? The letter from Mathew only just arrived?”
I never answered, but kept walking.
Jonah whispered to me before we entered my home, “He’ll get his justice, Violet-girl. You just wait. He’ll get his justice. Mr. Adams is on the job. Ain’t nothing going to stop your Mathew Adams.”
I stumbled in my footing, but as I forced my gaping heart to go numb, I kept marching back to my sister.