Aleksey sighed. “Now I know you are truly sick, for you did not rise to my allusion towood. I am confounded. Come. Saddle up.”
I had a foot in my stirrup. I was that close to avoiding the fate that was awaiting me when Lieutenant McIntyre let out a shout. We all looked over at him. He was pointing to the island, which was now clearly visible in the bright, cold winter’s sunlight. There was a figure on the shore. Man or woman we could not tell, for it was in shadow of the great trees and… it appeared to have no hair and thus confounded our ability to tell man from woman.
We tied the horses securely and joined our fellows on the beach. I will not recount the personal agony I had to endure to go this close to that deluge. Suffice to say I stayed very close to Aleksey and did not even object when he placed a brotherly hand on my arm—familial to outward gaze, but not if you had been the recipient of his deathlike grip. I was his prisoner. I felt the better for it.
The figure was waving at us, gesticulating, not in a friendly manner but in a despairing way, fearful. Why did it not call to us? We were perhaps fifty feet away and even over the terrible sound of the river and the falls would have heard a cry. We shouted to the figure, but it made desperate gestures for us to stop, glancing fearfully behind it.
Finally it stepped out from the shadows of the tree. It was naked. A woman. A pitiful creature, stumbling barefoot over the stones of the shoreline. Closer now, we could see signs that things were going very badly wrong for this poor woman. She had marks of severe treatment upon her, and with her shaved head, she reminded me of women I had seen dragged to a stake for burning. We shouted to her once more, but her eyes had such a maddened, terrified look in them that we had not the heart to make her frightened more. Finally Major Parkinson just shouted resolutely that we were coming… that she need not be afraid further, but his attempts only finished off her terror, for she screamed and crabbed on her hands and knees back toward the trees.
At that point the officers turned away from watching this pathetic scene to confer urgently about the proposed crossing. The reverend was watching his wife and child. I do not remember what the older Wright boys were engaged upon, but I do remember what I was doing. Aleksey and I were both still watching the woman. I think he was about to say something to me, because his grip on my arm increased if that were possible, but then we both saw it and almost automatically his other hand came up and clutched my other arm.
Something took her.
She got to the tree line.
She rose to her feet.
She turned one more time to look at us, and then before she turned back, something seized her, and she was taken back into the forest as if sucked.
I knew what I had seen.
I turned to Aleksey. His eyes were wide, and I saw in their depths that he had seen it too: a beast. A monster of dreadful aspect. It had appeared a man, but… not. I cannot explain it better, for I only had a glimpse of it. I thought it was the devil, and I do not think Aleksey would contradict that opinion if asked.
I do not think I need labor the dilemma we were now in.
We had seen a woman naked and in distress within fifty feet of us. What could we do but stay and thus remain men? If we left, that cowardice would stay with us and haunt us for the rest of our lives. That, of course, is how I relate this now, some distance from that accursed place and in my cabin with my pen and parchment in front of me. At the time, I was saying something other in my head. But all thefucksin the world, real or spoken, did not change the situation.
We had to cross to the island and assist the woman, and others if they were there.
I was in an agony of indecision then as to what to do with Xavier, Boudica, and Freedom. The other horses had been left in the stable where, it seemed reasonable to everyone, they would be quite safe until we returned. I knew that we would not return, so did not want my horses confined and left to starve to death. Where were the horses from the fort? The colony? I reasoned they had been given their freedom, for those who had crossed to the island had known they would not be coming back either.
Aleksey, needless to say, found it difficult to understand my tortuous argument. I think I must have been making less sense out loud than I was in my head, which was saying something. He would not listen to my very reasonable belief that we, none of us, would return. I persisted, however, and eventually I had my way unexpectedly, for Major Parkinson said they would split the party and that he would leave Lieutenant McIntyre on this side of the river with Jacob, Martin and Samuel Wright, and that the rest of us would cross. Thus the four men remaining could ensure the crossing point was secure and… other things. He did not say return to the seaboard colony and tell of our demise, but I knew he meant that.
The woman and the child, it appeared, were coming with us.
Again, the dilemma almost tore me apart. I did not want either of them on that island with me, but equally I did not want them left with my horses. It seemed the safest option to have me at their mercy and not my defenseless horses. I have made apology to Xavier and Boudica for this thought since our return. Upon reflection, it is the surest sign of the madness that had gripped me on that journey: the idea of either of them being defenseless is ludicrous. I had watched Xavier kill men with one blow of his hoof, and if he had not killed them outright, he trampled upon them until they were surely dead. But the boy had risen to a disproportionate size in my mind by this time. I was no longer seeing him as a child at all, as my conversation with Aleksey on the shore indicates. I needed to know what he was doing at all times, watched him, and felt him watching me. We were linked somehow. I was diminishing, and he was rising. Unless you have experienced this, you will not understand how that affects a man.
The crossing was decided.
A little way from the spot we had first spied, Jacob Wright found short pieces of rope knotted into a tree. This is how the colonists had crossed. Why they had gone over, we did not yet know, but where was now certain. It did not look a propitious site to us, worse than the one found that morning with the rocks, but then the reason for the selection of that place became clear. The sun shifted behind a cloud, and in the shadow and reduced glare, we could all see that this part of the river had even bigger rocks, only they were submerged by a few inches and therefore less obvious.
They almost formed stepping-stones and were very broad and flat, and had this been an ordinary river a man could easily have hopped from one to the other and made it to the island with nothing more than wet boots. But this was not a run-of-the-mill river. As I have said, the water flew past us faster than a horse can run at its most desperate extent. I could not believe the power of it even now, and I had been staring morosely at it for some time.
Major Parkinson even put a boot into the edge to see if he could step to the first submerged rock, and his leg was whipped away as if on an invisible string. He toppled, and it was only the quick reaction of his captain pulling him back that saved him from a soaking and possibly worse. The thought of falling into that water and being… well, the thought was too much for me to complete, so I let it go. I was trying desperately not to acknowledge that I was going to have to cross this body of water. My fist was squeezed so tight I’m surprised I did not have a seizure there and then on the beach. Had I thought, I might have faked one. I was that desperate.
The only option for the crossing, therefore, was to play a rope across the rocks, which could act as a handrail—Aleksey suggested two ropes so we could have one under each armpit, and everyone but me thought that was an excellent idea. I thought turning around and going home was an even better idea, but no one was listening to me because I was talking only in my head. You will notice that the corps of engineers’ officer’s idea of using the cart had been totally rejected. No one was floating on that river, ropes or not.
The problem was clear to all. Who was going to cross first—and how—to tie the ropes to the other side?
It wasn’t going to be me. I’d tell them that for free.
It was going to be Aleksey.
He volunteered.
After me, he was the tallest and strongest of the group. Far stronger and fitter than any of the officers (Mary Wright was fitter than Major Parkinson), and he was far more intelligent and capable than all of them. Also, he wanted to do it. He was a king, a general: he led from the front. I had never seen him once in the war give an order to a soldier to do something he was not willing to do himself or could not have done himself. I should have known he would volunteer to do this.
And, of course, I could not let him, could I?
