"It's a lucky thing we found them when we did," Ben Williamson said quietly as he stood with the others, "an hour or two more and it wouldn't have done."
"Aye, and yet a boon they were found at all," Lon McMaster whispered to his friend and comrade.
"When d'ya think-ah," Ben said suddenly as there was a heavy knock at the door.
Lon cringed at the noise, his nerves jumpy on lack of sleep. "Damn, that's loud. And ask the surgeon ta' turn off those lamps upstairs, it's too bright," he snapped irritably as the knocking resumed. "A'right, a'right!" he called, "I'm comin' ..."
Lon swung open the door, and stood face to face with Chief Powhatan. "Sir!" the Scotsman said, eyes wide, "Do come in out of the cold ..." Lon felt stupid all of a sudden, making small talk at a time like this. Fortunately, the surgeon's wife, Sarah Clarke, came bustling down the hall just then.
But as Lon sighed in relief to have someone there, his relief vanished. The surgeon's wife gave a startled cry and leaped behind Lon and Ben. "oh, great heavens! Is that-"
"Yes, ma'm," Lon muttered, "that's the girl's father. He won't bite. He's not carrying a weapon. Ask ta' take his cloak or somethin', be hospitable like."
"Um, ah, ... sir," the surgeon's wife said, blushing furiously, eyes wide, "Do come in ..." she stammered, and she reached for his cloak, a lovely thing of tartan plaid he'd gained on a trade last year.
"Are they all this stammering and awkward except for Smith himself?" Chief Powhatan muttered in Algonquin to the two comrades that had accompanied him.
"Perhaps they are afraid of you," hissed Namontack, the older brother of Kocoum, "Perhaps ... smile, or offer your hand in greeting."
Chief Powhatan didn't so much as drape his cloak across Sarah's arm, but tossed it at her so that it whipped her in the face; as she let out a soft oof of surprise the chief then pulled his face into something resembling a smile. The gesture was stiff and unfamiliar; he put out his hand with all the enthusiasm of wood. The general, and unintended, effect was of a skull's horrifying rictus.
As the white people gawped at him, Namontack stepped in to smooth the awkwardness. The warrior was an attractive man in his forties, just going gray at the temples. He held out his hand in a fluid motion and the barest of smiles warmed his face for just a second. "The chief would like to thank you all for what you've done ..."
"Oh, but of course!" Sarah Clarke gushed now, awkwardness gone, all politeness now. She shook Namontack's hand enthusiastically. "Do come in, my husband Dr. Clarke is upstairs with them now."
She led everyone to the sitting room downstairs and hurriedly draped the chief's cloak across a tall wingback chair. "Ben, perhaps, er, something hot to drink for everyone? And I'll just go and get Henry now." she flashed everyone an encouraging smile and hurried up the stairs two at a time. "Henry!" they heard her call as she passed the stair's landing.
Ben was married, and familiar enough with the process of making tea. He offered the men gathered their choice of "something stronger" or tea, and Lon immediately declared that he would have a glass of whiskey. The kettle boiled while Lon gulped down two glasses of rich, amber-colored whiskey and Namontack sniffed some in a glass, curious. He said something to the chief and the other Powhatan man there. Namontack then drank it down, and Lon clapped him on the back. "That'll put the hair on your chest, eh?" Namontack coughed, a hand at his mouth, eyebrow raised quizzically.
"Strong," he remarked as he put down the glass. "Not bad."
"Care for another?" Lon asked, and Namontack said yes. The other Powhatan, an old healer everyone knew as Kekata, asked for one too.
"I'm not sure this is for the old man," Lon told Namontack; Ben was bustling about in the small kitchen preparing tea. "Too strong."
"No," Namontack countered, "let him have some. Our people keep wondering about this drink every time we make trades with yours, but no one has let us try it yet."
Amused, Lon handed Kekata a glass of stuff. Kekata looked at it intently, sniffed it, and after he saw Namontack down his second tumbler, swallowed it too. "Ahgh!" he cried, squinting his eyes shut and pulling a face, but after a moment coming up with a satisfied expression, "perhaps this will help my visions."
He and Namontack traded some funny barb in their language and were laughing when Ben came with a cup of tea for himself and one for the chief.
"Lon, did you just give them whiskey?" He asked his friend incredulously.
"Sure did," Lon replied, "it'll take the edge off." Ben frowned at him, though. Presently there were heavy footsteps on the stairs, slow and steady. There were murmurs as Sarah and Henry spoke quietly to one another. There was a faltering step on the stairs, too. A third voice. As rich and sonorous as it ever was, but weary.
"Watch the landing," Sarah was saying. "Hold on to my arm."
"...Don't need your help," the deep voice groused.
"Quite to the contrary. You've been in bed for a day and are shaky on your feet." Sarah's voice had a sharp, aristocratic snap to it, and her husband's matched it.
"You'd best listen to my wife," Dr. Clarke said authoritatively, in an over-educated accent that just begged for a smart-ass retort from the patient.
The man's grumbling stopped and he let himself be helped.
The descent was tiring, and as the last few stairs were crossed, John Smith leaned heavily on Sarah. He looked horrible-pale, disheveled and unwashed, in borrowed clothes that were rumpled with sleep. His long blonde hair was tangled and greasy and there was a few day's beard on his cheeks.
"Thank you, Sarah," he managed to say as Sarah eased him into an empty chair in the sitting room. He winced at the movement as much as he did at the bright lights and the glow of the fireplace; Sarah turned down the wick on the lamp nearest him. "Thank you," he whispered, eyes closed, as he leaned his head back on the chair.
Sarah put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "There, now," she soothed, "let me just fetch you some tea."
The silence in the room was heavy, laden, about to crack open.
Everyone watched the firelight dance across John's pale face and after a moment or two of soaking up it's warmth, he opened his eyes, looked at his friends.
His gaze was tired, weary and beaten down. He looked like a man defeated as he gazed at everyone in turn.
But he only spoke to one.
"Chief Powhatan I ..." He leaned his head on the wingback chair's sturdy, high back, grasped at the bandage around his upper arm. "I am so very sorry, I failed to protect your daughter."
There was a long silence in which Sarah brought John a cup of tea and smoothed some of his tangled hair out of his face. She patted his hand and disappeared back up the stairs.
"Failed ..." John muttered as he struggled with the teacup; it would have been a comedic scene but for the situation's seriousness: Ben put equally large manly hands around the teacup and stilled John's trembling hands. "There you are, mate," he muttered to his friend encouragingly; John managed to drink the strong black tea without sloshing any of it out of the delicate china cup. He drained it dry and set it on the saucer with a violent clatter. Ben wisely took it out of his way.
"John," Ben said carefully as he pushed the dainty tea stuff to one side of the rich mahogany end table, "You did well. In the end you ..." Ben hesitated as he crouched down by the wingback chair, peered into his friend's eyes, eyes that were foggy with grief and fear and the fresh memory of terror.
"In the end," John said quietly, "what? In the end I murdered a man. For my own defense, for hers ... It was too late though. She was so cold, after I shot him. I remember holding her hands, and ..."
Everyone watched as John Smith put his face into his trembling hands, ran them down his skin, scraping the days old stubble with a dry sound, groaning as he pushed them through his greasy hair. His eyes closed tight, in anguish. "It was too late."
Glances were exchanged around the room as the little group of people drew closer to the grieving man. Lon's hand found John's shoulder, just above the bandage wrapped around his muscular arm.
"John," Ben said carefully, a hand on his friend's knee, a little shake to urge him to open his eyes. slowly , John did so, but with all the reluctance of a scared child loathe to open his eyes after a nightmare, as a loving parent calls to them, to tell them there's nothing under the bed.
When John was looking at them-rather, when his eyes were no longer darting frantically around the sitting room and his gaze was through his friends and not at them-Ben spoke.
"John, you killed Ratcliffe, yes- you shot him in the head. He's dead. So work with that knowledge, you did kill a man. But before you shot him he must have stabbed you in the shoulder, after he come up behind ye. But my friend, it weren't in vain-she's alive."
A thousand twitches of muscle worked in John's face then. "You're lying," he finally whispered, cowering away from his friends like that scared child in bed after a nightmare, only he didn't have a counterpane to hide under. His hands covered his face again. "You're lying!" He said more loudly. "She was so cold ... there was so much blood. Her lips were blue. She's dead."
"John," they all urged him at once. Namontack pulled John's hands away from his face, and his hair tumbled around him in a tangled mess. "John," Ben and Lon said sharply at the same time. Then Ben spoke.
"Pocahontas is alive, John. Her old man had sent out search parties after the storm as almost a full day later, none had come back not to their village nor to Jamestown. We knew you were both expected back and feared some kind of accident. I'll tell you what old boy, you're lucky I was called to go along, with my time as an apprentice to a surgeon. What we still don't know is how the hell and why Ratcliffe was there. And ..." Ben hesitated.
There was so much the colonists didn't know and needed to know. None of the other hunters out in those days were harmed in this way. It looked like a personal attack on these two, that's for sure. But John was still not himself. And Pocahontas ... It wasn't the time to ask.
"Pocahontas is alive, John. I was able to take enough care of her that we got her back to Dr. Clarke's. That's all that's important."
John had calmed and was listening now. He stared at Ben, and reached out absently for his friend's arm.
"You ..." he said quietly.
Ben hushed him and continued. "Most of the wounds were superficial. Those bleed a lot. She's got a gash down her arm. I guess she was trying to defend herself. She's got two deep stab wounds, though and a few shallower. And one nice slash across the belly, like Ratcliffe was hesitating and didn't want to drive the knife in."
John remembered now. Events were a blur, but he had some memory of it.
John had slipped Pocahontas the knife he always kept in his boot, when they'd brushed hands as she had walked past him after Ratcliffe ordered her to leave the cabin so that he and John could have a "civilized discussion" without an "animal" present.
The very thought of him calling her that set his teeth on edge even now in his opium-addled state.
She'd sprang on him like a mountain cat, knife at his throat; he'd put down the pistol. But then Ratcliffe had knocked Pocahontas off balance, she'd tripped on his enormous fur coat she'd put on. Poor thing had been shivering so violently before, her teeth were chattering and her lips were blue.
As soon as she'd gone wobbly, Ratcliffe had slashed the knife across her belly, opening a shallow scarlet line that had bloomed red immediately. As she'd clasped her hands to the seeping wound, he'd arced the knife in a dangerous swoop, and she'd thrown out her arm to block him, shrieking in terror. Another long, red line. Then he'd pushed her to the floor and stabbed, and stabbed ... and then John had tackled him, shot him several times but the bullets seemed to bounce away. But Ratcliffe had been down. So John had rushed to her side and tried to stop the bleeding, tried to take the pain and fear from her. But she had writhed in agony, screamed and screamed. And then she had reached to him with her bleeding arm, to tell him, "behind you!" And then he had grabbed the gun, and exploded in rage on his enemy, shoving him violently away.
That must have been how he'd gotten this wound in his shoulder ... now that he thought about it, the stitches pulled and his wound itched. He picked at the bandage as the room started to grow too warm; Kekata was there, gently moving his hand from the gauze.
He didn't remember shooting Ratcliffe, though. He closed his eyes as the memory floated up and grew stronger. The two of them wrestling around, punching and kicking and shouting, and then John's hand enclosing around the cool metal pistol, and bringing it up just as Ratcliffe had him overpowered, and firing ...
"Oh, my God," John muttered now, safe in the wingback chair, warm in front of the fire. "Oh, God." He stood up abruptly, rattling the tea items beside him on the table.
I'm a murderer. I killed John Ratcliffe, who I've known for years and years in all our travels together. I'm a murderer, again. The last time I killed people, I was with him. So long ago, in Turkey. I had vowed never to kill again ... I had made that vow silently to myself, secretly, as I kissed Pocahontas for the first time that night under the willow tree.
But I've failed.
I'm a murderer.
I'm a murderer with blood on his hands and they're saying she's alive ... But if she dies, will I have killed her? My negligence that night to send her out on her own ... If she dies now ... It can't be true. Ben is lying.
"You can ask the doctor to see her now," Ben was offering, "that's why her father's come." But Ben's words were fading and the room was growing much, much too warm. Namontack's warm brown eyes ... he had four now ... and Kekata split into two people ... Powhatan's face loomed huge now, and his mouth was a great swallowing thing like a beast's. It was so warm in here ... the room tilted and slid and everything was dark.
"Let's not tell him he fainted away," Lon said as they stretched him out on the doctor's plush settee.
Ben snorted derisively. "Much good that will do, as he's about to come around. Just be quiet and calm as he starts to come around. And don't lean too close. Don't slap his face or nothing. It's not like in those novels. You'll only scare him."
"You're speaking from experience?" Lon said lightly, "what, your wife does up her corset laces too tight of a mornin' and faints from time to time?"
"Don't talk about my wife that way," Ben snapped at his friend as he loosened the shirt John was wearing and draped a blanket over his legs, "and no, my wife does her corset up only just enough, thank you."
Wonder if that Pocahontas will ever wear one, Lon thought, as he tried to picture the constricting item of clothing ever making it into her wardrobe. Just as quickly as that thought had come to his mind unbidden, Lon pushed it away, shaking his head as if to clear it. What a thought at such a time, he thought, as his friend lay on the settee. Everyone knows he wants to marry her. He just hasn't done the asking yet. If they could keep her alive he might get his chance ...
Slowly, John came around from the faint. "What happened?" came John's voice then, tired and hoarse. "Everything just ... Oh, God," he groaned, "I fainted. Didn't I." He stared at his friends. "I swear, if you tell anyone-"
They all swore not to let this unmanly episode be broadcast to the colony.
A while later, they all helped John up the stairs except for Kekata; he stayed downstairs in a comfortable chair, warming his arthritic old bones and said he'd only come up if they needed him. (Ben moved the whiskey out of the old healer's reach).
"Now, John," Ben was saying as they approached the closed door to the room where Pocahontas lay, "she's been given plenty opium and it's quite likely she will not have any memory of what happened."
John had been revived with tea and bread and a light broth, and he was feeling better, his thoughts were clearer. "You gave Pocahontas opium?" he asked in horror. "It's addictive. What if-"
"John Smith," Ben Williamson said sharply, drawing himself up, "how long have I known you? How much crazy have we endured together? And you dare question my decisions while I'm the one with surgeon's apprentice training? Well what do you think Dr. Clarke said, huh? He said the only way to properly treat her was to dull the pain completely so she'd lie still. She would have died, John, if we hadn't been able to stitch her up proper and that required really knocking her out. I know it's addictive just as much as you. I'm sorry about the effects it might have on her, mate, but I'm not sorry that I saved her life."
John was quiet now, resigned. He leaned heavily on his friend, exhausted. "Fine." He said without protest. "I just want to see her."
With that, and a harrumph of being right, Ben knocked on the door. Sarah Clarke opened it. "Shh," she whispered, "She's waking. Let's not frighten her. You come along now," she hissed, and pulled them all inside, shutting the door quietly.
The room was pleasantly warm, with a low fire in the grate crackling away, and the smell of freshly brewed tea masking the odors of a surgeon's daily trade. The sharp smells did linger under the sweetness of the tea, though-the sour smell of opium; the musty smell of bedsheets dampened by sweat.
John faltered, but Ben only pushed him further into the room, closer to the large bed, the curtains of its canopy pinned back, the niceness of the room spoiled by dirty linens in a basket in the far corner, the doctor's bag open on a chair. Mercifully, all the implements were put away, so there were no sharp scalpels sitting incongruously next to the tea things.
"You'll have to excuse the mess," Sarah murmured as she hurriedly shoved the basket of dirty linens through the laundry chute, tipping its contents down for the maids to launder, "but I only just changed the bandages a bit ago."
Namontack had taken one look at the scene and decided that was enough for him, he retreated back down the stairs; they heard the loose stair creak under his steps. Lon had stayed downstairs with Kekata.
Dr. Clarke leaned over the patient, fingers gentle at her neck, brushing her tangled dark hair away from her face.
"Ah," he whispered, motioning John over, "she's doing alright," he whispered as Ben managed to get John into an empty wingback chair by the bed. "She's waking, slowly, but she's waking," Dr. Clarke said by way of encouragement, the ghost of a smile crossing his lips.
"She'll be glad to have you here," he told John. "She has a fever but that's normal as the body recovers from ... something like this." Dr. Clarke had held his tongue, not saying violent stabbing attack.
John said nothing, only reached for her hand, but he hesitated and his trembling hand only brushed hers where it rested on the richly embroidered counterpane.
"I've told him most all but I'm sure it will bear repeating, Dr. Clarke," Ben told the doctor as he put a hand on John's shoulder. "I'll leave you all now. I'll be downstairs with the rest of us."
Chief Powhatan then retreated downstairs too, saying he would come back when his daughter was awake.
That left John and Dr. Clarke alone in the room, door closed as Sarah went downstairs to entertain the guests and make a fresh pot of tea.
The clock ticked on the wall as the two men watched Pocahontas sleep.
Dr. Clarke pulled up the other chair then, and John looked at him, clear eyed and listening for the first time, really, it seemed since he'd woken up to find himself shirtless and stripped down to his drawers in a strange bed and with a fresh stab wound in his arm.
"Dr. Clarke, I can't thank you enough."
"Don't mention it, John. How long have I known you?" the doctor said with a grin, and John allowed himself a smile and a bit of a chuckle then-he had been to the heights of adventure and the depths of hell with these men, and here they were running a colony and trying not to get themselves killed in the process. Par for the course.
Pocahontas stirred, shifted in the bed, the hand on the counterpane retreating underneath it as she curled her body to the side. She was unwashed, her hair a tangled, greasy mess; her face bruised and with a sheen of sweat. In the heat of fever she pushed the covers down, and John hastily covered her up again, as she was only in a very thin, very short cotton shift. It's buttons were undone for Sarah Clarke's easy access at bandage-changing and wound-washing, so her long hair was tangled and damp against bare breasts.
Pocahontas opened her eyes then, and pushed at these hands that were covering her body with hot, oppressive sheets. Her face was flushed, there were old tear-stains across her cheeks and her lips were dry. Had Ratcliffe's fist cut her lip? John seemed to remember then that it had.
"No," she said then, her voice hoarse, "too hot ..." she whimpered and kicked out at John as he tried to keep the sheets on her. Dr. Clarke pulled the counterpane down, though, folding it over her feet.
"If a patient is restless, that's a good sign they'll pull through," was all he said in his clipped over-educated Oxford accent.
She was protesting again. "Pocahontas, no," John was insisting, "you have to have the sheet on-" But then she'd batted his hands away with all of her strength, and it wasn't so much of sitting up as it was an awkward rolling to the side, and trying to get up.
Pain shot through her belly, tight and grasping, stabbing and pinching. Breathing was so painful. Her head ached like a drum. Her mouth was so dry, she was so thirsty. Why was the room spinning? Why was the room so warm? Why did she feel like she was burning up from the inside? And why, oh, God, WHY were there such stabbing cruel pains in her side? And what was wrong with her arm? Why was it bandaged? Why did it hurt so?
And why ...
Why was she ...
She pushed her tangled, sweaty hair off of her neck, catching the damp whiff of her own scent. She stared down then, at her own body, knowing that the beauty of her smooth skin and the plump sweetness of her breasts and the curves of her thighs ... contrasted deeply and very, very wrongly with the gauze that wrapped across the tautness of her belly.
Under the gauze was where all the pain was coming from. She knew then, the source of the pain was that she had been hurt in some way.
And there were two men here, watching her stagger and gasp and grip the side of the bed, watching her tangle her hands in her hair and push it away, to reveal a barely-there cotton shift that was gaping open, exposing said breasts. They stared at her as she absorbed her situation and her pain. She knew one of them. Knew him very, very well in fact.
The fever was raging and heat was rising within her, but she was shivering even as her body was so hot.
I know the one with the blonde hair and the blue eyes. And I have met the other one, once or twice.
The pain was absolutely relentless, vicious. Making it hard to breathe.
She reached out her hands, beseeching, no longer caring about her nakedness beneath the shift. The pain was horrible, and it was making her body contort of it's own volition; she was no longer in control. She writhed and wailed on the bed, holding out her arms to the man she knew. The pain was so sharp it drew sobs from her as she screamed and reached for him, dangerously close to falling out of the bed, or so it felt. The shift slipped completely off her shoulders then and fell in a damp drape behind her. She reached out her arms, and called to him.
She knew his name, and it came to her lips just as the haziest of memories started to come back. She still didn't know why she was here this way ... but it didn't matter right now.
"John," She sobbed, "John ..." And his arms were there, sure and strong, wrapping her up as she sagged against him. His body was cold and warm at the same time, his shirtfront deliciously cool on her naked, heated skin.
Dr. Clarke calmly and without saying a word draped a shawl over Pocahontas' nakedness, and then plucked the shift from the bed and chucked it down the laundry chute.