Bone River (47 page)

“Leonie, be reasonable. Don’t give me that look, Tom.” Junius sat on the settee beside me, putting his arm around my shoulders. I felt his touch like a weight, a burden. I wanted to shrug him loose, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. “I’ll take them out after the storm. They’ll be no use to Baird if they’re rotting and crumbling away like that mummy—”

I jerked away from him. “Don’t say that. Don’t call her that.”

Junius frowned with surprise and then made a sound of disgust. “For Christ’s sake, Leonie, you need to stop thinking of her as human. She’s a relic—hell, the boy will tell you that. He was willing to sell her to a curiosity shop.”

“I think you should stop talking,” Daniel said.

“Can’t stand to hear the truth of it, can you?”

Daniel snapped, “Will you
look
at her? She looks ready to fall apart. What happened, Lea? Tell me. What did the old woman say?” His tone gentled with the questions, though I heard wariness there too. He’d been afraid, I remembered. Afraid of what Bibi would say about him.

I looked up at him. “Is there anything else you want to tell me? Have you any other secrets?”

Again, that wariness, but there was confusion there too, as if he were trying to think of whether he’d failed to reveal something important, and that was when I knew he told the truth. There was nothing to fear from him, but I’d known that already. Nothing to fear but change, a new life I thought I might be too afraid to take. But then I realized he might no longer wish to offer it. The words for what I was were ugly in any language. Half-breed,
sitkum siwash, sitkum Boston
.

He shook his head. “No. Nothing. What did she tell you?”

I looked at Junius, sitting beside me. “My father respected you above all others.”

He put his hand on my arm. “Sweetheart, you’re shivering. You’re soaking wet. Dry off. Go to bed. Whatever you mean to say can be said later. I think you’re half sick.”

“I need to ask you a question.”

“Come on.” He rose, pulling on my arm, trying to pull me to my feet. “I’ll come to bed with you. I’ll keep you warm—”

I jerked away so hard he fell back. “Everything’s changed! Why can’t you see it?”

“Because I don’t mean to relinquish you to this cub,” he shot back angrily, glancing at Daniel.

“I’m not yours to keep or give away.”

He frowned. “You are my responsibility. Your father gave you to me.”

“Like an heirloom,” I said, laughing shortly, half crying.

He kneeled beside me, his voice pleading, “Lea, it’s an infatuation. Lust. When it’s over, what will you have? I’ll forgive you this mistake. I’ve been your lover for twenty years. Does that mean nothing?”

I said, “Did you know who my mother was?”

He looked confused. “Your mother? What has that to do with anything?”

“Just tell me. Did Papa ever say anything of her to you?”

“Lea, you’re speaking nonsense. I—”

“Did he tell you that that he killed her? Did he tell you that he murdered my mother?”

Junius froze.

Daniel frowned. “What?”

I ignored him for now. I looked at my husband. Again, I said, “He strangled her.”

Slowly, Junius said, “I think you must be feverish, Lea. Come to bed. Please.”

“I’m not feverish. Did he tell you anything of this? Of her? Anything at all?”

Something flashed in his eyes, a quick knowledge. He banked it quickly and glanced away, but I’d seen it there. “What do you know, Junius? And think carefully before you answer me.”

“I don’t know anything about any murder. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who told you this? Bibi? She’s half crazy.”

“The mummy isn’t ancient,” I told him softly. “She’s my mother. My father killed her and put her in the basket. He buried her. It’s why his necklace was with her. It fell off when he strangled her.”

“Your mother?” Junius looked so shocked and surprised that I knew he’d known nothing of it. “Are you joking? She can’t be, Lea. She’s ancient, anyone can see it. We’ll cut into her. You’ll see. We’ll find the rags and herbs—”

Daniel’s disbelieving laugh cut him off. “Are you mad?”

“She’s been mummified. Deliberately. She’s ancient. I’ll prove it to you right now. Fetch me the saw, boy.”

“Fetch it yourself. Listen to her, for Christ’s sake. Look at her.” Daniel stepped over, squatting beside me. “How do you know this, Lea?”

“In my dreams, I saw—”

“Your
dreams
?” Junius burst out laughing. “You’re talking as crazy as the widow.”

I ignored him. Daniel hadn’t taken his gaze from me, and it was to him I spoke. “It’s true. Lord Tom told me.”

Junius looked at Lord Tom, who was tossing aside the soiled rags, rising. “What do you know of this, Tom?”

“It was before you came,
sikhs
. Teddy asked me for help to bury her, but I refused. She was dead already. I would not touch her. I did not know what he had done with her body until we found her. He said she was dangerous, that she’d come for her child and he did not want to give her up. But that was all he said. We never spoke of it after that day.”

“And you’ve said nothing of it all this time?”

“It was not my secret to tell,” Lord Tom said quietly. “She was not of my people, and I owed Teddy my life. He was afraid of her, and I was glad that he kept her from taking her child from us. So I said nothing.”

“Her child,” Daniel repeated. “Leonie?”

Lord Tom said, “I have always believed so.”

“She was Nez Perce,” I said dully, and I waited for Daniel to flinch, to look horrified, but before I could see his reaction, Junius made a sound—impatient, short, and I looked at him.

“This is all nonsense,” he said. “Whoever that was, it wasn’t the mummy. She’s ancient, I tell you. Tom’s mistaken.”

“It was all a lie,” I said to him. “My whole life has been a lie.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Junius told me.

“It explains everything. The way I feel about things. What I know—”

“Leonie, don’t jump to conclusions.”

“What other conclusion can I make?”

Again, that little flinch, that slip away.

I rose. I grabbed his arm. “Junius, you know something. Tell me.”

He pulled away.

“I need to know,” I insisted. “Is it something about her?”

“I knew your mother was Indian. But that’s all, Leonie. That’s all I knew. I didn’t know she came for you. Hell, I still don’t believe he would have killed her.”

“Even if she threatened to take me away?”

“He said she was a savage. She could never have taken you away. He didn’t need to kill her.” Junius frowned. “Don’t you see? No one would have let her take you.”

“He never said a word to me,” I whispered. “He never told me.” I looked at Daniel, whose expression was carefully blank, that actor in him, the way he knew to shield his emotions, to admit nothing,
to do whatever avails him
...I turned away. “He should have told me!”

Junius gave me an impatient look. “He couldn’t tell you. It would have ruined the—”

Experiment.

The word burst into my brain, even as he hadn’t spoken it. And it all settled into something I knew, every journal entry fallen into place.

I
was the experiment. Papa’s attempt to determine once and for all the question of blood and environment. His need to keep her silent, to keep me ignorant of my heritage, of everything I was.

It explained everything. Everything I’d ever thought. My father’s fear over the way the Indian legends affected me. His pooh-poohing of my intrinsic knowledge of relics—the call of my mother’s blood, how he’d hated that I loved it here, the place where my mother was buried...Who I was, what I was, all those things Papa had tried to deny. My fierceness and my passion and the way he and Junius saw them as primitive traits, the dominance of my Indian blood, and how anxious they’d been to overcome it, to turn me into the respectable, staid white woman they’d wanted me to be.

I looked at my husband in horror. “It was me, wasn’t it? The experiment was me?”

He looked uncomfortable; he glanced away. “Don’t be absurd—”

“You knew about it.”

Now he looked at me again. He spread his hands. “No, of course not.”

“You did, Junius.” I advanced upon him, not knowing what I meant to do, to say. “The journals say it. He says he told you. That you promised to help him. How was that? What help did you offer?”

“Only to keep it secret. Only to observe.”

I laughed bitterly. “You did much more than that. How could you have borne it? Marrying me knowing what I was?”

“Lea, please. I love you.”

“But you think I’m a savage, don’t you? How many times have you said it?”

“Not you,” he insisted. He grabbed my hand, twisting his fingers hard into mine. “You were never that. It was remarkable, the influence your white blood had. We thought it might overcome the rest in time—with the right training. As long as there were no children, there was no reason for you to know.”

His words brought Bibi’s sharply to mind. I wanted to cry. I wrenched my hand from his. “How lucky it was, then, that there weren’t any.”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“But how could you have known that? What would you have done if I’d conceived?”

Now Junius looked uncomfortable. “Your father cautioned me...”

I was crying.

Junius said, “It was better this way, Lea. I promise you—”

“Bibi says I’m with child,” I managed.

Junius froze. “What?”

At the same moment Daniel said, “Lea?”

I could not bear to look at Daniel. To see the condemnation in his eyes, the disgust. I kept my gaze on Junius, who seemed to waver before me.

“You’re
what
?” His voice was strangled. “You can’t be.”

“She seemed certain,” I said.

“You
can’t
be.”

Daniel started toward me. “Is this true?”

But he never got to me. Junius grabbed Daniel by the collar. “Do you know what the hell you’ve done?” he shouted. “You stupid boy, do you have any idea?”

I grabbed Junius’s arm. “Junius, please. Please, don’t.”

Junius shrugged me off in the same moment that Daniel pushed him away, his eyes blazing. “Don’t touch me, old man.”

Junius barely stepped back. He spat in Daniel’s face, “You’ve ruined everything. From the day you first came here, you’ve done nothing but rile up things that should have been left alone.”

“How inconvenient of me,” Daniel said. “Too bad you couldn’t just go on the way you had been, everyone doing what you wanted. You don’t even know what you have. You’re a selfish bastard. The thought of your blood polluting my veins makes me sick.”

“Polluting.” Junius’s laugh was aborted and mean. “You’re the one who’s polluting. You couldn’t keep her from getting with child, could you? And now you’ve ruined everything—”

“I don’t know that it’s his,” I said, stepping forward, coming between them. “It could be yours. It could—”

“It’s not mine,” Junius snapped.

I stared at him, confused. “But—”

“It’s not mine. I’ve spent twenty years being certain of it, for Christ’s sake.”

My ears began to buzz. The world went gray, the sound of the rain pounding against the house beat in time to my blood. I could not make sense of what he was saying. “I don’t understand.”

His anger was ugly. “I’ve done what I could to keep you from getting pregnant. Do you understand that?”

“But...but why?”

“Because your father asked me to. Because it was part of the promise I made him. The experiment. He was afraid of what you would discover. He was afraid the baby would look Indian.” Junius looked at me, tense and miserable. He went on, “He told me you were a half-breed. He told me he’d originally meant to leave you with your mother, that he wanted nothing to do with a little savage. But you looked so white. You could pass. So he took you. He said your mother was...that she’d been a...temporary madness.”

“A temporary madness,” I repeated numbly, sinking onto the settee.

“He hated himself for it,” Junius said. “But you...you were the answer to a question he’d spent his life debating. How much does blood matter? Would it trump a white upbringing? If he treated you as if you were white, would that overcome the Indian part of you? Were you even capable of learning, or would the stain of your mother corrupt you?”

I looked at Lord Tom, who watched stonily, and suddenly I realized that he had spent twenty years hearing these words, twenty years of silently bearing Junius and Papa and their ceaseless contempt for Lord Tom’s people. I said to him, “How could you listen to this? How could you stay?”

Lord Tom met my gaze; I knew he understood. “For you,
okustee.
”

Junius let out his breath. He looked at Daniel, who stood there, his fists half-clenched, and said with such disgust it startled me, “And as for
you
...you’ve ruined nearly forty years’ worth of work in a few months. A lifetime’s study, gone.”

Daniel shook his head. “It’s not me who’s ruined things, old man. It’s you. You and her father. I’d feel sorry for you if I didn’t find you so pathetic.”

I stared at my husband. “This is why you married me, isn’t it? Because Papa wanted you to continue the experiment?”

“One of the reasons,” Junius said. “The others I’ve told you. I wanted you. I loved you.”

“Loved?”

“Love,” he said, and the truth of it was in his eyes. “I love you, Leonie. You know that. I’m willing to forget all this, to forgive you—”

“You love me, but you didn’t want to have a child with me.”

His gaze begged me to understand. “The research was too promising. You were everything we’d hoped for, Lea. It was nearly time to write the paper. Your father’s experiment, my managing of it. I couldn’t take the risk that the child would be Indian. I couldn’t risk your knowing. I made a
promise.
”

A promise. A lifetime of promises. I looked at Daniel, and I heard what he’d said to me only this morning:
Promises to the dead. What if now that they’re gone they realize they were wrong?

“I have dedicated my
life
to this,” Junius said, rising, stepping in front of me, blocking Daniel from my view. “You’re a scientist, Lea, you know the value of this. Can you blame me? Have I not taken care of you? Have I not loved you?”