“If you don’t mind carrying a weapon, aye,” Selah said. “Danger might be lurking. A boat is sometimes more easily managed and allows one to go farther at greater speed. And in better weather, ’tis safer.”
“Do you have one?”
“Shay has a small canoe that will suit. Are you willing?”
“Of course. Let’s be away!”
5
On a cloudless, mid-May morn, Xander left Rose-n-Vale when the dew lay heavy on field and forest. More than two and a half years had passed since he’d traveled to the Powhatans. Not since Mattachanna died had he ventured there of his own accord, nor been invited. Much had changed. Thrust back as they were by the English, the Powhatans’ principal village was no longer in the same place.
And he was no longer the same man.
Pondering this, he took his time. His horse, Lancelot, was content to simply canter. Saddlebags stuffed with gifts from the Hopewells’ store, Jett loping alongside him, he made good time, crossing streambeds and traversing great stretches of forest cleansed by a recent rain. Meihtawk would meet him just ahead, where the recent treaty laid the boundary line between English and Powhatan land. Glad for company, he never liked to be too much alone with his thoughts. Of late they’d taken him in a direction he was unwilling to go.
The troublesome matter had begun with his aunt, when he had asked her to join him at the Hopewells’. A simple shared supper it was not. Somehow the courtesy of her coming had turned into a hope he might take a bride.
But not Cecily Ward.
“Nephew, pardon my temerity . . .” She paused long enough to cough at his pipe smoke. That noxious weed, she called tobacco. “Have you ever understood the reason Selah Hopewell is not yet wed?”
He stretched out his legs and managed to say despite his discomfiture, “I have not given it much thought, Aunt.”
“Perhaps it begs considering.” Her powdered face assumed a rare excitement. “That night at supper I was struck by her winsome manner. She moves and speaks so becomingly. Once I thought she possessed more of her father’s merits, but she has grown into her mother’s graces. And there’s no denying she is lovely with her corn-silk hair and those intelligent green eyes, even if she is a tad befreckled.”
He didn’t respond, nor did he need to, as she kept up a steady volley of adulation.
“’Tis a wonder no man has claimed her. I once heard something about a smitten sea captain, but I cannot recall the details, which were precious few, only that her wise father thought a seafaring husband little better than no husband at all.” She took a breath. “With all this fuss over tobacco brides, I feel Selah Hopewell is being overlooked. Tell me, Alexander, do you find her the least comely?”
He nearly choked on his pipe. “I would have to be in the ground to say nay.”
A raised brow. “How thankful I am you are above ground and aware of her charms.”
Smoky rings spiraled to the ceiling as he weighed his reply. “Mistress Hopewell shows no inclination to marry.”
“Well, have you asked her?”
“I have not.” How to best put it? “She is a tad too independent minded for me. Too . . . spicy.”
She chuckled, then sighed and studied the dogs lounging at his feet. “I daresay a woman’s company would exceed these baneful creatures’. In honor of your mother, my dear sister, please give remarrying some thought.”
She left him then to retire to her bedchamber. But the questions she had raised refused to be quelled. They followed him now into the howling wilderness, where he’d best be concerned about watchful eyes and launched arrows. Still, the thought of Selah Hopewell would not budge.
Even recollecting her passionate rebuke of him when he’d returned from England alone failed to hold its usual sting. And she had, at last meeting, called him . . . what?
Irreplaceable.
If ever one word had the power to go to a man’s head, if not his heart . . .
Jett growled, a low, throaty foreboding. Xander slowed, Lancelot showing no sign of disquiet. Meihtawk? In seconds the lad appeared between a break in the trees ahead, a feather aflutter in his loosened hair.
“Wingapo!”
The familiar greeting dissolved Xander’s tenseness. He reached into his pocket and tossed Meihtawk a quantity of candied lemon peel. Meihtawk promptly popped a piece into his mouth and stroked Jett’s black head. Dismounting, glad to stretch his legs, Xander fell into step beside him.
“You smile today, True Word. You are glad of your visit after so long?”
“I am remembering that first time.”
“When you came to the People with the spinning circle?”
The reference to his compass stole Xander’s smile. “I nearly lost my life that first foray into the woods.”
God rest the three colonists who’d gone hunting with him but were soon bristling with arrows. He’d been but a boy, no serious threat to the tall, painted warriors surrounding him. When they’d taken him back to their village, he’d stayed quick witted enough to remain alive, surrendering his coveted compass without being told to.
With a flash of his dark eyes, Meihtawk said, “Do not forget the talking bark.”
Xander’s smile resurfaced. “When I charcoaled a message to my mother?”
Though the incident had occurred long ago, the harrowing if amusing story still warmed countless ears.
He had taken care to send a message to Rose-n-Vale on a piece of bark he’d etched with coal. The reply penned on paper by his fretful mother and delivered by a Powhatan courier left the Naturals in varying degrees of astonishment over the talking wood. Rather than feeling superior, it led him to be thankful for the basic things he took for granted that made the Naturals marvel.
Later, after wedding Mattachanna, he’d been caught by surprise when she’d dragged out a quantity of gunpowder from his stores and attempted to sow it as if it were seed. Exasperated with powder being in short supply, he’d explained such a substance could not produce what she hoped, that the precious commodity could only be had a more laborious way.
Such artless unpretentiousness made the arrogance and guile of James Towne beyond enduring.
He took a deep, untainted breath and drank in the lushness of late spring. Beyond settlement borders there seemed an uncanny stillness, free of the ring of anvils and axes and gunshots, the relentless cacophony of settlement life. There was danger here, aye, but the wonder of the undisturbed natural world was uppermost.
“I miss your summer residence near the falls of the Powhatan River,” Xander told him in the Powhatan dialect. “And your winter camp on the Pamunkey.”
“The old days are gone.” Meihtawk entered a fragrant pine barren. “That land is now scarred and broken by land stealers.”
Of which Xander was foremost. He’d earned his own land by venturing to James Towne, inherited his father’s, and been awarded a vast tract by Chief Opechancanough upon wedding Mattachanna.
“Do you know why I have been asked to come to Menmend?”
“You are the father of the chief’s grandson, the husband of his favored daughter.”
True. Yet Xander sensed this did not safeguard him. “What are the chief’s current thoughts about the English? I would be prepared.”