Joshua clicked his tongue and flicked the reins, their wagon wheeling along a grassy road and Juliet’s heartbeat quickened with each rhythmic thud of the horse’s hooves. One step then another, closer to their little log cabin. She imagined every descriptive image Joshua had once told her.
The soil is fat and lusty and everywhere a man spits, plants grow. Cherry trees that fruit like clusters of grapes. All sorts of fowls, to take at our pleasure.Nuts as big as eggs. The river flows with lush green grass with the shelter of a mountain.
Having learned how to farm and run a household in the frontier while at both the Hayes’ and the Bells’ homes, she was well prepared to take on everything as a frontiersman’s wife. The art of plowing, baking bread over a fire, skinning rabbits to make a stew, smoking and preserving, she could do it all. Yes, she could, and she’d be very good at it.
The last leg of the journey seemed to last forever. Her gaze drifted to her husband’s handsome profile. Every time she looked at him she fell in love all over again.
A year and a half had passed since leaving the massacre of Blackberry Valley behind and subsequently moving to the safety of Fort Sullivan. There she waited, waited for Joshua, waited for the war to conclude.
The attack and destruction on Blackberry Valley and other communities created a hue and cry throughout the Colonies; that the Indians and Tories had hit vulnerable targets, taking advantage of insufficient troop weaknesses of the Colonists unable to defend themselves had brought the people together.
General George Washington vowed never to allow such carnage to happen again. So long as there were Indians in western New York and Pennsylvania who lent support to the British, such attacks as those that had occurred to Blackberry Valley, Cobleskill and German Flats and Andrustown would continue. To prevent further outrages, the perpetrators had to be rendered incapable of mounting attacks. The Iroquois Confederacy had to be destroyed.
Ojistah’s prophecy whirled.The ice this winter is thin and where once we walked upon it boldly, we must now feel our way with care, lest it collapse beneath us. We have walked into the lair of the great panther and have slapped him in the face with our hard hand. The Iroquois have brought tears to his eyes with the blow, but we have not killed him! His claws are still long and his teeth are still strong. And now, for what has been done to him, he must be very angry and we must tremble as he growls with rage.
Behold my vision. I see many villages destroyed, hunger pinching the bellies of our children, the crying of women and children, diseases and the losing of wisdom of our elders for they will die.
But no one had listened to Ojistah. They believed the lies they had been fed. Had not good food and liquor in abundance been provided by the British? Does not their father, the King, continue to give them weapons and men to support them? They shared in the bounty of plunder that had been taken and the prisoners. They had been paid well for scalps. Why then should they be begging the Americans for peace?
Raid after raid continued, led by Thayendanegea, Sayenqueraghta, Cornplanter, Redeye, and Gucinge, who took up the hatchet against the Americans in a time of unparalleled terror. All Iroquois except the Tuscaroras and the Oneidas stayed militant. In addition, the Mingoes supported by the British attacked in the upper Ohio and Detroit, the Shawnees in Kentucky.
There had been no surcease. No relief from the horror. As promised, General Washington ordered General Sullivan and General Clinton to take the enemy to their ground and break their morale. The expedition destroyed forty Iroquois villages, demolishing stores of winter crops and breaking the power of the Six Nations in New York all the way to the Great Lakes.
Of comfort during her long months at Fort Sullivan was a letter she received from Mary. Her motherless friend basked in Waneek’s care, her mother-in-law, predicting Two Eagles would be surprised upon his return to be greeted by two sons. Mary was to have twins.
After long and lonely tension-filled nights where Juliet had prayed solidly, she was rewarded with Two Eagles’ and Joshua’s safe return.
There were so many incidents in the aftermath, some good, some bad. Edmund Faulkner, her cousin, had set up a law practice in Albany, partnering with his brother, Two Eagles. Edmund traveled the Mohawk Valley to meet with clients and using every opportunity to visit his mother Waneek who welcomed him with open arms. Of Tionnontigo’s fall, Juliet learned Ojistah had made it safely to her twin sister’s home with her grandson, Morning Sun, and Father Devereux. Never reaching the coasts of his beloved England, Colonel Thomas Faulkner had died from alcoholism, his bones interred on the shores of Lake Ontario. Crims, James and Caroline Bell and their nine children, Betsy, Grace and several other Blackberry Valley surviving citizens left the town and had resettled closer to Albany. Of the eighty prisoners the warriors took hostage that fateful day, only forty returned.
With the war ebbing, communications flowed back and forth across the Atlantic. A letter had arrived from the Duke of Rutland, Joshua’s father, comforted with the news of Snapes’ death and Joshua’s safety. The duke detailed the demise of Duke Cornelius Westbrook, answering the mystery of who had been the mastermind behind the plot to ruining the Rutland family. Vicar Abrams passed away from a violent heart attack during a Sunday sermon never knowing his only child, Mary, was happily married to a savage. Juliet’s uncle who had taken her ancestral home in England had lost all to gambling debts and died in a duel. Reports of Baron John Bearsted’s prosecution for his crimes against Juliet and Mary was followed by his imprisonment at Newgate. This news was met favorably by Two Eagles, Joshua, Mary and her.
Of most significance was the safe return of Joshua’s older brother, Nicholas, and then the surprising and joyful arrival of two subsequent nephews, one born to Rachel and Anthony, and another to Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra—both born on the same day!
Juliet turned and patted the wedding wheel Ojistah had given her, a fine gift she’d hang in her home. She adjusted the blanket around her sleeping infant daughter, held securely in her arms, and decided now was the time to share the foretelling with Joshua.
“Waneek and Ojistah prophesized our daughter, and her daughter will be of great importance.”
The glowing adoration in Joshua’s eyes as he gazed upon his daughter warmed Juliet. “I take their visions as gold. Who knows what our daughter and granddaughter’s destinies will be? All the events these past months have opened up the vast Ohio country, the Great Lakes region, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky.”
“Our daughter is an infant,” she continued, “—and I pray she doesn’t have your wanderlust, at least not yet…which brings me to question…how are we going to house your father, Rachel and Anthony, Nicholas and Alexandra, your Uncle Thomas, Abigail and Captain Thorne and their children in our tiny log cabin when they come to visit? Joshua, you must think this out.”
He clicked the reins, urging the stallions forward. “I’ll think of something.”
“You better think fast. Chances are they will appear on our doorstep the same time we arrive.”
Juliet sighed. The forests they traveled through were struck with the colors of fire, the leaves had turned to magma-reds, hot-oranges and fever-yellows. Wild turkeys clucked beneath the bushes and hard nuts thunked to the ground while squirrels scuttled across crackly leaves, eager to seize one final reward. A wind gusted, swirling the branches of the trees surrounding them. Leaves soared to life by brusque autumnal notes that stirred them from slumber, inviting a final waltz before a wintry embrace would claim them.
Ahead, the undulating path gave way to an aperture of blazing saffron-yellow light and opened to a clearing. Juliet blinked. Dazzling sunrays streamed over a three-story mansion of blunted gray stonework with huge white columns; stretching its rousing length with undeniable luxuriant confidence, before surrendering itself to wide green meadows where cattle and sheep grazed. The owner had strategically placed it on a high bluff above the glittering, jewel-blue Mohawk River. She gazed in awe so taken with the beauty of the home.
Joshua hauled back on the reins at the entrance, and Juliet leaned into him, reminded of her worn appearance. “We cannot possibly stop here. I’d rather travel farther…to our home.”
Joshua leapt from the wagon and swooped Juliet and their daughter up in his arms. Disturbed, the baby cried from the movement.
“You’ve woken, Rebekah,” Juliet chastised, knowing the babe wanted to feed. “Put me down. What will the owners think?”
Joshua laughed, holding her tight in his embrace. “How else am I to carry my bride over our threshold?”
Juliet widened her eyes. “Ours?”
