Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) (53 page)

The sun broke into her eyes as he spoke, and she smiled as she curled her fingers around his hands.
“Then marry me,” she whispered.

“
Now?” he chuckled, trying to still the wild pounding of his heart.

“
Now,” she answered, her eyes shining toward him. “Before God, in this forest chapel. The Almighty knows our hearts and our intent. And I am yours, Fallon, until death parts us and we meet again in heaven.”

Without hesitation he tossed back the bearskin and rose to his knees, pulling her up with him.
With their hands clasped together, Fallon lowered his forehead to hers. “Almighty Father God,” he prayed, lifting his thoughts heavenward even as his hands grasped the most precious earthly being he had ever known, “we consecrate ourselves to you this day. May the marriage of our hearts and souls accomplish more as one than we ever could as two.”

He opened his eyes then, and despite the chill of the winter
air his body flushed with warmth as Gilda looked up at him. “Fallon Bailie, before God I surrender my heart and soul and body to you,” she said, swaying toward him. “Leaving all others, I will cleave only unto you.”

“
Gilda Colman,” he answered, tremors of rapture caught in his throat, “I accept you as my wife and offer my heart and soul and body in return. I will love you, protect you, and honor you until we join again before God in heaven.”

He paused, lost in the wonder of her warmth, and felt his heart skip when she laughed softly.
“And God hath pronounced us man and wife,” she murmured, tightening her hands around his. “And Reverend Buck can do it officially when we next see him.”

“
God’s opinion is more binding than Reverend Buck’s,” Fallon answered, opening his arms to the warm and welcoming embrace of his wife. The sweet pounding of her heart made him shift closer to her, and the light touch of her lips against his throat unfurled streamers of sensations that hitherto he had only imagined.

In the midst of the storm Gilda had thought she would never be warm again, but now she felt like a bird drifting through shafts of sun-brightened air.
She snuggled into the warmth of Fallon’s arms, desperately wishing that this hour would last forever.

Fallon
’s lips brushed her forehead, and he sat up in silence, his flesh pale against the darkness of the furs that covered them. She feathered her hands over his back, tempting him to stay, but he turned and kissed her, then resolutely stood up. “If what Noshi told you was true, I have to return to Jamestown,” he said, slipping quickly into his shirt and coat. “Everyone at Jamestown thinks the peace with Opechancanough will hold. They will not be prepared for an attack.”

“
I will go with you,” she said, sitting up. “I can’t let you go alone. If Opechancanough’s scouts tell him that you are out to warn the English—”

“
He won’t know,” Fallon retorted, mischief gleaming in his eyes. “You forget, wife, that I am quite a scout myself. I’ll be a passing shadow in the forest, and no Powhatan will see me. With any luck I’ll be picked up on the river and will arrive at Jamestown within the week.”

Worry jagged through her like a thunderbolt.
“You would leave me here?”

In answer, Fallon sank onto the pile of furs and kissed her cheek.
“Y’are not yet strong enough to travel, love,” he said, his breath warm in her ear. “Stay here in the cave. There are enough provisions for a few days, and I’ll send help from one of the outlying settlements.” He pulled back and caressed her with his eyes. “I won’t leave my wife unprotected, and this is the safest place for you now.”

Like an awakening giant within her, the anger she had buried rose and blazed into sudden fury.
“You can’t go,” she cried, wrapping her hands around his arm. “We have just found each other, Fallon, and we don’t need the others. Forget them and stay with me!”

He pulled away, a wounded expression in his eyes. “You would have me leave Edith, Wart, and Brody to the mercy of Opechancanough?”

“
Wouldn’t they leave you?” she asked, her temper at a flash point. “Why are you here alone, Fallon, where are your comrades? Where is your fast friend Brody? Did he turn and run back to Jamestown at the first sign of trouble?”

Fallon didn
’t answer, and Gilda knew she had hit upon a truth. She took a deep breath and went on: “They have God to protect them, Fallon, and God hath brought us together. Last night, in the storm, I saw that I needed to surrender to God, and I did. And for the first time, I was able to surrender to you, and now that I have, I love you more than life itself. Would you risk your life and our happiness to warn stiff-necked people who aren’t going to listen?”

“
They will listen,” Fallon answered stubbornly. He pulled a deerskin from the cave and tossed it over his shoulder. “I must go, Gilda. I swear to you that I will return.”

She watched, disbelieving, as he tossed a handful of dried corn and peas into a leather pouch and tied it around his waist.
“You truly intend to leave me,” she whispered, more a statement than a question.

“
I cry you mercy,” he whispered, begging for understanding. He knelt beside her as if he would kiss her again, but Gilda turned her head away. After a moment, he spoke in a ragged voice: “Know this, Gilda, that I love you more than my life, and I will return to you. But God hath answered my prayers in leading me to you and Noshi, and he demands that I care for his people. The English must be warned, and for some reason, God hath given me the responsibility to do it. There is no one else.”

“
Then take me with you.”

“
Nay. Y’are not as strong as you think.”

His hand fell upon her head, imploring her to turn and kiss him farewell, but she stubbornly kept her face averted until she heard him stand and move away.
The wet, dead leaves of winter muffled his footsteps as he moved down the hill toward the stream, and Gilda choked on the words that would have called him back. Part of her wanted to scream that she would be gone when he returned, that he would never find her, that he had used her heartlessly.

But as the sounds of his movement grew fainter, she knew that his leaving was inevitable. Fallon was a protector by nature, an honorable and godly man, and he could no more stay away from those who needed help than she could imagine life without him.

She curled up into a ball on the bearskin that still smelled faintly of Fallon. Last night she had promised God that she would surrender her self-will. She had not expected her decision to be tested so soon.

With every step his feet took northward, Fallon
’s heart retreated southward until he was ready to crawl into the cave with Gilda and never come out again. He could happily live and die within her arms, without ever seeing another Englishman or Indian for the rest of his days. But every time he thought of turning back, the faces of Wart and Edith Rolfe flashed across his mind. His feet doggedly carried him forward until he spotted a column of smoke rising from a stand of trees in the distance.

He approached cautiously, fearing he had stumbled onto a Powhatan village, but over the rim of a hill he spied the timber fencing of an English settlement. More than twenty-three hundred colonists lived now in Virginia, and new plantations sprang up like weeds across the wilderness. Three stout wattle and daub houses lay in the center of this cleared field, and a handful of men were splitting wood outside one of the buildings.

They stared at him in frank curiosity when Fallon approached and raised his hand in greeting.
“I seek your master or mistress,” he said simply, and a gangly youth with a blotchy face jerked a dirty thumb toward the largest of the houses.

Fallon ran his hands through his hair to smooth his disheveled appearance, then knocked at the house.
A thin, pale woman opened the door and blinked in surprise at the sight of him. “I give you good day, madam,” Fallon said, nodding slightly. “I have news for the master and mistress of the plantation.”

“
I’m the mistress,” she said, retreating slightly behind the door. “That news have ye?”

Fallon gave her a careful look.
She was one of those women who had reached middle age too soon, with taut skin held by a severe bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a decent but faded dress, probably the one she had worn off the boat, and when Fallon shifted his weight she shrank back like a hound that winces whenever his master raises a hand. Her eyes darted nervously past Fallon as if she expected trouble at any moment.

“
Your plantation is not far from the place where I left my wife,” Fallon said, smiling to put her at ease. “She is too weak to travel, and is resting in a cave a few miles south of the stream that cuts through this property. I’d be very grateful if your husband could send someone to care for her. She’s recovered, but I dared not press her on this journey and I wasn’t sure what settlements were in this area—”

“
Why are ye talking to my wife?”

Fallon felt a sharp pang of recognition and whirled toward the harsh voice.
Tobias Harden stood behind him, squatter than ever, with the same bulbous nose and rheumy complexion. His pale green eyes glittered with hatred as he glared up at Fallon.

Fallon held up a hand and backed away.
“I mean no trouble with you, sir, I’ve only come with a warning. I have news that Opechancanough plans to attack all the English settlements soon, so you should take your people and go into Jamestown until the threat is over.”

“
Leave my land?” Harden threw back his head in a loud guffaw. “You already stole one man from me, and now you want to take my land!”

“
Tobias, please,” the woman whispered, and Harden clenched his fist and frowned in her direction. With a whimper, she closed the door and disappeared from sight.

“
I am not a planter,” Fallon said, striving to maintain his dignity. “And I didn’t steal a man, but cared for the half-dead boy you left in the street. But the danger is real, Master Harden, and you’d do well to heed my words. The Powhatan—”

“—
are friendly,” Harden answered, sneering. He pointed toward the skinned and gutted carcass of a deer hanging from a tree. “I’ve been trading with them for months. I give them worthless junk and they do my hunting for me. So I know y’are full of lies, and I’ll give you two minutes to get off my land before I get my musket.”

“
There’s another matter of some import,” Fallon said, retreating before the hateful glow in Harden’s eyes. “I left my—”

Harden went inside the house and slammed the door in answer, and Fallon slipped to the side of the building and caught a glimpse of the woman through the window.
She looked at him and pointed emphatically toward the fence, and Fallon knew Tobias meant business. “My wife,” he mouthed the words. “Will you help my wife?”

She nodded, then waved her hands frantically as Tobias slammed out the door.
Fallon darted behind the house and ran for the fence.

Tobias circled the settlement, his fist wrapped firmly around his musket, until he was sure the young troublemaker had gone.
The man had some gall, appearing from out of the woods and demanding that they leave their land! Truth to tell, he probably had a company of ruffians hidden in the trees. If Tobias had been foolish enough to fall for that ruse, like as not he would come home to find an empty barn, an empty house, and somebody else living on his property.

Megan flinched when he slammed the door, and he glared at her before propping his musket against the wall and taking a seat by the board where his dinner waited.
“You were talking to him before I came up,” he said, ladling his thick pottage with the wooden spoon she had carefully handed him. “What were you two talking about?”

“
Naught of import,” she stammered, averting her eyes. “‘Twas only what he told you—”

“
Nay,” he said, clenching his free hand into a fist. “He said something about a woman, I heard the word ‘she.’ What woman?”

Megan paled, but sank to her stool opposite him.
“His wife,” she said, her voice flat and expressionless. “He said his wife is nearby.”

“
And why would he be telling you that?” Tobias growled, still glaring at her. “You aren’t likely to be dropping in for a cup of tea, are ye?”

She shook her head fearfully, and when she did not speak, he slammed his fist down upon the table so suddenly that she jumped.
“His wife is sick,” she blurted out, wringing her hands. “He left her in a cave upstream, and he wanted to know if we’d help her.”

“
Sick, huh?” Tobias felt himself grinning. Turn about was fair play, and mayhap ‘twas time for him to play the part of do-gooder. Since that red-headed upstart prided himself on rescuing sick servants, mayhap he would pay a visit to the man’s sick wife. After all, the knave lived in Jamestown, and probably had his pick of the young beauties that arrived regularly aboard the ships . . .

“
We’ll find her,” he said, attacking the bowl of pottage before him. He felt Megan’s stunned silence across the table, and looked up at his wife with a smile. “I owe that young man a favor,” he said, wiping his lips on the back of his shirt sleeve. “We’ll go right away, afore dark. We can’t be leaving a young lady alone in the woods, can we?”