Captive (40 page)

Hernandez, a striking, imposing man, turned with distaste to see who had called out. He didn’t judge the Seminoles; he didn’t judge his own men. They’d seen too much of disease and grisly death. He turned back to the man who, naked and dirty and not large at all, still managed to stand with tremendous pride before him. “King Philip?” Hernandez said. The Indian nodded in acknowledgment. Interpreters
stood by, but the
mico
had apparently understood his name.

“You are my prisoner, sir. Perhaps things will go better for you if you send out for your followers. Have them come in. Talk with us.”

The interpreter repeated his words. Philip stared at him. Hernandez thought he smiled. Philip spoke in his own tongue to one of his people at his side.

“King Philip will send out runners for his allies.”

“Tell him to bring in his son, Coacoochee. Known to the white men as Wildcat.”

Philip again appeared to be smiling. He said something to a man at his side.

“What was it?” Hernandez asked John softly. He had learned many words himself in the Indian tongues, but John had a gift for language and spoke Philip’s language fluently.

“He said, sir, indeed, he will send for the ‘Wildcat.’ And he says that white men should take grave care. He cannot know what manner of creature will come once a wildcat is summoned.”

Hernandez nodded, acknowledging Philip’s importance. He turned on his heel, aware that the night wasn’t over. Another captive, called Tomoka Jon, had promised to lead them to another camp.

He should have been glad, proud of his leadership, proud of his troops. In all the time they had battled so far, he had just made one of the most important captures ever, that of King Philip. The more leaders they brought in, the more they would break the resistance.

He had Philip. And Philip could bring him Wildcat. And other wild denizens of the forest as well perhaps. Smart, dangerous creatures. Like an Alligator—or a Running Bear.

He felt weary, not elated.

The Indians, it seemed, were far wiser than many of their white enemies realized.

Wildcats and other creatures of the forest simply could
not be kept in captivity. They couldn’t be tamed, and they couldn’t be chained.

God alone knew what blood and fur might fly when they were accosted.

T
he days passed strangely for Teela and James, as if time had somehow stopped within the copse, gone still. It had not, of course. Beyond the green shade of their hammock, the world, and the war, were going on. But here, for the time, it didn’t touch them.

At first James seemed somewhat subdued, brooding. And almost determined to make Teela see that she couldn’t endure the hardships of life in the hammock.

He told her that they had nothing to eat; she said that she wasn’t hungry. He found roots that could be ground for a starch stew or porridge; she learned to grind roots. He told her that the Seminoles always kept a sofkee pot going, so that any visitor or man or woman within the tribe might eat when he or she was hungry. He told her Seminole women served their men.

She told him she wasn’t Seminole.

Two mornings she was wretchedly sick, and determined he wouldn’t realize it. He did see it, damned himself, and collected some wild berries and some squash and potatoes from an abandoned plantation. He killed a rabbit, which she annoyingly and expertly prepared over a spit, according to his directions.

His temper eased. His brooding gave way to a simple thoughtfulness.

And finally, in the privacy of the copse, they managed to cease being white and Indian, and simply be.

James didn’t mention what he was going to do with her; Teela didn’t ask. They swam, they fished, they lay in the sun, they slept beneath the moonlight. They made
love at any hour. They saw no one, they wished to see no one.

The best times, Teela thought, were those when the sun was setting. When the sky was etched in magenta, when cranes and egrets streaked across the heavens and came to rest upon gnarled roots by the water. Sometimes then James lay propped against the trunk of a fallen cypress, and she lay curled within his arms, and they both watched the sky and talked. One day when they had spent nearly a week in their haven, there had been rain, and the sun was just beginning to fall with an extraordinary beauty. Teela told him about Lilly, about how her mother had thought that marriage to Michael Warren would be so wonderful, fitting, and proper. Lilly believed with her dying breath that Warren had been a fine father for Teela. “I don’t think she ever loved him. I think she loved my real father, but then …”

“Then?” James queried.

Teela shrugged. “Well, marriages are often arranged in Charleston. She’d known most of her life she was going to marry my father. I used to love to dream about them, though. To imagine that he had been the great love of my mother’s life, that they’d shared a passion beyond bounds. Children want to believe those things, though, don’t you think?”

“Sometimes they’re true. In that, I was lucky. I know that my father adored my mother.” He hesitated a moment. “He was willing to give up everything for her, not that she asked him to.”

“She must miss him.”

“She has missed him a long time,” he said softly, his hand moving gently over her arm as he spoke. “He was quite a man, my father. When Jarrett’s mother died, he grieved terribly until he found a new interest in life. Indian culture. He was intrigued, fascinated, by other cultures and people. He was twice blessed. He met my mother, and she adored him, and Jarrett.” He smiled ruefully. “At times, I believe, she is actually more fond of Jarrett than me. I accused her so once, in good
humor, really, and she told me that she’d had Jarrett longer than me.”

Teela laughed. “Jealous little ruffian, eh?”

He smiled, shaking his head. “Mary has a tremendous capacity for love. She might still marry again, who can say? She was sixteen when I was born, and gives the appearance of a young woman even now. She has mourned Father a long time and I imagine—” He broke off suddenly.

“What?”

“She might indeed marry again. If any men are left alive to marry when this is over.”

Teela drew slightly away from him. “I don’t want to talk about
this.
”

He hiked his weight up, half leaning over her. His eyes were grave. “Eventually, we’re going to have to talk about what we’re going to do.”

“We could stay here,” she said stubbornly.

“Not forever.”

“Why not forever?”

“Warren will hunt us down and you know it. And though I honestly wouldn’t mind a chance to rip him to shreds, he’d kill so many others in the process of rinding you that their lives would be on our conscience.”

“So what will you do?” she demanded.

“I don’t know yet,” he said evasively.

“Go back to war,” she accused him.

“And have you a better suggestion?”

“Yes! Quit fighting, live at Cimarron with your brother and your daughter, and—”

“Trade my life for my honor and the debt I owe my mother and her people?”

“What about the debt you owe your father, your brother, your friends?”

“They are not threatened with extermination.”

“You’ve said you will not raid plantations—”

“And I will not, you know that.”

“Then walk away from the war!”

“Do you think it will be so simple now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind.”

“Damn it, James—”

“Never mind!”

“You need to explain yourself and listen to me in return. The war will eventually be lost. The army will come, and come again in droves.”

“Mark my words, Teela, you are wrong. This war will not be lost. One Indian standing firm can defeat a dozen exhausted soldiers, hungry, weary, and riddled with disease.”

“The Seminoles are hungry, and many have died of malaria and measles.”

“Teela—”

“James, if you just—”

“Stop.”

“But I—”

“Enough!”

Enough, enough!
He spoke, and she was supposed to obey.

She startled him by leaping up, her hands on her hips, looking like a very feminine pirate in his white cotton shirt, tied at her waist with a dyed red band of rawhide. She glared at him through narrowed eyes.
“Enough! Enough!
What is that, Mr. McKenzie, your favorite word? Order? Command, rather, I should say! Well then, you’re damned right. I’ve had
enough
!”

She spun away from him, the wild length of her hair flying behind her. Shoulders straight, head high, her posture suddenly again that of the well-bred southern lady she was, she stalked away from him.

He watched her for a moment, vexed. Then he smiled slowly, because her appearance was so at odds with her bearing. His shirt chastely covered her shoulders, back, and rump, but there stopped, revealing the slim and delicious length of her legs. Her carriage was prim; her movement was unbearably evocative. He watched her another moment, making her barefoot way a good distance from him along the water. Where she was going
he didn’t know. That she was never going to reach her point of destination was a dead certainty.

He closed his eyes briefly. Their time was limited. He knew it well. It seemed they’d found a hidden paradise. But Wildcat had always known this place. Jarrett knew it as well; they had sometimes come across the territory as children; they had come for conferences; they had celebrated the Green Corn Dance with other tribes and factions. They had played here, a refuge for them then, a refuge for them now. Luckily, only those he trusted completely—whites and Seminoles—did know of this place.

Wildcat knew he was here. He had come briefly in the night to tell James that Otter had conceded Running Bear’s right to the woman. She would be safe from Otter in the future. Otter was pleased that his attack had been so perfectly planned. Only a few soldiers had escaped the slaughter. Wildcat had spoken very quickly, warning James that white soldiers were rumored to be in vast numbers all around St. Augustine. Though James was safe from Otter, he had best take care on all other fronts.

Wildcat was a strange friend for James. No one, not even Osceola, was more determined to dig in. He could battle and kill without blinking and speak his mind clearly no matter what the opposition or consequence. He was a man of integrity who could also keep completely quiet when necessary, and in the bonds of friendship he could be utterly trusted.

So much for Otter and Wildcat.

He didn’t need thoughts of either man to warn him anew that his time in this strange haven was limited.

She was still walking. With such dignity. Yet still, she … swayed. She was so angry, aloof, disdainful, proud …

Delectable.

He rose swiftly, agile, silent. It was true that his silent speed was uncanny.

Yet she heard him. In the split second before he
caught up with her, tackled her, and brought them both down to the earth.

“Enough!” she shouted to him, gasping for air, struggling furiously against his hold. “Enough, enough, enough—”

“Enough!” he agreed, his fingers lacing with hers, forcing them against the damp earth.

Yet as his body straddled hers and his lips silenced any further argument, he realized with a sinking feeling of anguish that it would never, ever be enough.

They had to talk with the white men. Another parley. The events taking place recently demanded that it be so.

Staring into the fire, seated before it, Osceola thought these things with a great deal of pain in his heart.

Yes. He had to talk. The children were starving. The women were bones. The warriors themselves were little more than skeletons. Some temporary truce must be made.

If he went in to talk, he realized, he might never walk away again. He had done things the whites did not understand and would never forgive. He had waged the war against them that they had waged against him and his people.

He was interrupted in his weary thoughts by the sudden arrival of Otter. The warrior stalked with his typical fury to stand before the fire opposite Osceola.

Osceola refused to acknowledge him, so Otter sat before him.

“We need Running Bear. Now,” Otter told Osceola. “That he fought me I will accept, for I challenged him to do so. That he took a white woman whose scalp might now hang from my rifle, I accept, for he fought for her. I have granted his right to her, sworn her safety from me. But he stays deep in the hammock now when he is needed. He stays with the white woman, forgetting us. You know where he is. Tell me. I will go for him now.”

Osceola looked up at Otter. Yes, he knew where Running Bear had gone. Wildcat had been to see him very
early one morning, before the dawn had begun to brighten the sky. They had spoken briefly. Running Bear had the problem now of the white woman, but he trusted Osceola, and Osceola would not betray that trust.

Wildcat could not go to Running Bear again. Wildcat had felt he had no choice when his father’s messenger had come to tell him that the whites had demanded King Philip bring in his son or perhaps face the hangman’s noose. So Wildcat, a fierce warrior they needed badly, was a captive of the whites.

But there were others who could be trusted to summon Running Bear. Despite Otter’s words of honor, Osceola could not trust Otter with directions to the secret copse.

Osceola was suddenly very tired.

There were days when he could rise and feel as well as he ever had, days when it seemed that strength and sun and life came with swift energy to his limbs. Then there were times when he believed that he dreamed those days, for some mornings when he woke, he could almost imagine that death slept atop him like some dark, blanketing form. As it did so often lately, Osceola’s mind drifted back in memory.

Wild Orchid had been so beautiful then. The best that three shades of men had to offer. Her skin was deeper than copper, her eyes darker then black. Her hair was like the wing of a raven, curling beautifully from her Negro heritage while her white blood softened her features. He had warned her often enough when they had been young to keep clear of the soldiers, but she had loved life. Loved to move, to dance, to run, and so, long before his run-in with Wiley Thompson that had become so well-known, he had become enemies with the man. Because Wild Orchid had come too close to the whites, and she had been seized as a runaway slave. It hadn’t mattered that he had explained the beautiful mulatto was his wife. She had been taken from him, and he hadn’t had the strength or the power then to fight and demand that she be returned to him. He had been able
to do nothing but follow behind through the bush as the soldiers had taken her, chained, to St. Augustine. All along the way he had looked for a chance to attack the whites and rescue her. They had been too strong. He had all but wept with fury and frustration. Then he had waited for word of her sale, and he had learned that she had been stripped down on the block and sold to a gaunt-faced white man who intended to take her to a plantation near Tallahassee. They had laughed while she stood on the block. They had commented on what fine sport she would make in a white man’s bed, how lush and erotic her flesh would appear against the whiteness of cotton sheets.