In its aftermath came a dreadful silence before a resonant halloo in the clearing.
Clay?
Her very bones seemed to melt, an odd comingling of joy and stark relief. She rose from her seat and went to peer out a loophole. Clay was at the edge of the north woods, bare chested, his linen hunting shirt suspended like a flag of truce from his upraised rifle. Fury—and fear—soared.
“Hold your fire, you blatherskate!” She hurled the words at whichever brother had misfired behind the blockhouse wall. ’Twas one of Pa’s Scots terms, reserved for the most heated moments.
She rushed to the door and unbarred it, the seconds till Clay reached the cabin stretching taut. He brushed past her, the earthy scent of pennyroyal riding the air. Ma and Keturah regarded him with deep concern as they stood by the hearth.
Tessa took in the whole of him in one grateful glance, beginning with his sodden buckskins now as black as the hair plastered to his blessedly intact skull. Never mind the indecency of wearing no shirt. Ma took the dripping garment from his rifle tip and hung it from a peg to dry while he looked out the loophole Tessa had forsaken, rifle ready.
It grew eerily still. Too still. The closed-up cabin felt like a bake oven. Only the Lord knew how long they’d be cooped up together. No doubt Clay had come across the same Indians Ross had seen from his lofty seat. Had he abandoned his horse? Likely he and the stallion had swum the river, as the ferry hadn’t been waiting. Maybe the Indians would pass them by.
Supper waited on the table, a savory kettle of stew and a stack of corncakes a foot high. The fare grew cold, all appetites lost.
Clay reached for his still soggy shirt. Pulling it on, his arms overhead and head hidden, he was a riveting sight. Tessa tried not to gape. Hester would be scandalized. ’Twas a moment meant for a wife maybe, intimate and unguarded. But her close scrutiny gained her something else besides.
In the shuttered, barred cabin, where the day’s dying light crept through an occasional crack, she saw blood pooling beneath his moccasin. Confounded, she went to him and knelt, reaching out a hand to examine his leg in a way that made Ma gasp.
“You got hit,” Tessa said, calling for rags in the next breath.
But how badly? And by whom?
“Hope it wasn’t you,” he teased beneath his breath.
“Not I. One of my blatherskate brothers.”
“Blatherskate? From the Scots song ‘Maggie Lauder.’” He chuckled. “His aim’s off, so it’s nothing to fret about. I’ve had worse.”
The flesh below the knee was torn, warm, and bleeding in a way that made her stomach sink. His buckskin breeches were ruined, but better them than his leg.
When Ma brought warm water, Tessa cleaned the wound, grateful for the shadows even though they made her task tricky. She prayed for a clean mending and no infection. Ma hovered, neither of them paying much mind to Keturah’s exchange in Lenape with Clay.
Keturah crossed the cabin to the corner she shared with Tessa and returned with a highly ornamented buckskin pouch. They watched as she mixed water and a white powder from her stores to form a poultice.
“Buck brush and yarrow,” Clay told them, answering their unspoken questions. “A cure-all for many ailments, especially wounds.”
Expertly Keturah applied the paste before finishing what Tessa had started and binding his leg with clean cloth.
“She’s a kikehwèt,” he said, eyes on Tessa. “A healer.”
Tessa repeated the odd word, noting Keturah’s face light up when she echoed it without stumbling.
“You ought to let her treat you too,” he finished with a lingering look at her reddened forearms. “The Lenape are known for their curative powers no matter how savage some think them.”
Preoccupied with him, she’d forgotten herself, yet at the mention her inflamed skin began itching anew.
“An oatmeal poultice usually cures poison vine,” Ma said.
“Mayhap it’s not poison vine,” Clay replied, switching to Lenape and looking at Keturah again.
Their unintelligible exchange made Tessa feel fenced out. Apart. And left her wishing herself away from the cabin, even in the chancy woods.
Keturah said a few words and Clay translated, “Jewelweed.” He looked at Tessa. “Want me to get some? You look right miserable.”
“You’d go out that door again? With your leg like it is?”
“My leg is less worrisome.”
