“And if they are …？”
“Take care of it.”
I FOUND IAN in the springhouse, sniffing cheeses.
“Take that one,” I suggested, pointing at a cheesecloth-wrapped shape at the end of the top shelf. “It’s at least six months old, so it’ll be hard enough to travel with. Oh, but you might want some of the softer cheese for Oggy, mightn’t you?”
There were at least a dozen tin tubs of soft goat’s cheese, some flavored with garlic and chives—one adventurous experiment with minced dried tomatoes that I had severe doubts about—but four unflavored, for use in feeding people with digestive upset and for mixing in medicines that I couldn’t get anyone to swallow otherwise.
“Rachel thinks he might be teething,” Ian assured me. “By the time we reach New York, he’ll be gnawing raw meat off the bone.”
I laughed, but felt a sharp pang at the realization that he was right; by the time we saw Oggy again, he would likely be walking, perhaps talking, and fully equipped to eat anything that took his fancy.
“He might even have a proper name by that time,” I said, and Ian smiled, shaking his head.
“Ye never ken when a person’s right name will come—but it always does.” He glanced down to one side, by reflex. To where Rollo would have been.
“Wolf’s Brother?” I said. That was the name the Mohawk had given him when he became one of them. I was quite aware—and I thought Rachel and Jenny both knew it even better—that he had by no means stopped being a Mohawk, even though he’d come back to live with us again. He hadn’t stopped looking down at his side for Rollo, either.
“Aye,” he said, a little gruffly, but then he gave me a half smile and the Scottish lad showed through the tattoos. “Maybe another wolf will come find me, sometime.”
“I hope so,” I said, meaning it. “Ian—I wanted to ask you a favor.”
One eyebrow went up.
“Name it, Auntie.”
“Well … Jamie said that you plan to stop in Philadelphia. I wondered …” I felt myself blushing, much to my annoyance. His other eyebrow rose.
“Whatever it is, Auntie, I’ll do it,” he said, one side of his mouth curling. “I promise.”
“Well … I, um, want you to go to a brothel.”
The eyebrows came down and he stared hard at me, obviously thinking he hadn’t heard aright.
“A brothel,” I repeated, somewhat louder. “In Elfreth’s Alley.”
He stood motionless for a moment, then turned and put the cheese back on the shelf, and glanced down at the clear brown water of the creek rushing past our feet.
“This might take a bit of time to explain, aye? Let’s go out into the sun.”
60
Just One Step
September 15, 1779
JUST ONE STEP. THAT’S all it ever took, all it ever takes. Sometimes you see such a step coming, from a long way off. Sometimes you never notice, until you look backward.
Here it was, right in front of her. The door of her cabin—hers, her home, the home of her marriage, of her baby’s first months, of her realest life—was open to the morning and the round gold leaves of the aspens lay flat on the wood of the stoop, gleaming with dew as the dawn came up.
One step over the threshold that divided her small rag rug, with its quiet, homely blues and grays, from that pagan abandon of golds and greens and red outside, and her life here was over. They might come back—Ian had promised that they would, and she trusted that he’d do whatever he could to make it so—but even if they did, it would be a different life.
Oggy—perhaps he would be walking, talking, might have a different name by then. He wouldn’t recall this early life, the closeness of waking against her body in bed, turning at once to her breast and yielding up his separate existence so easily, becoming one with her as he’d been when she carried him inside, just for those moments while he fed from her again. Somewhere he might be weaned, on the road between now and then. He would be a different person when they came back. So would she.
Jenny came up beside her, her face bright and a pack with food and drink, handkerchiefs, clouts, and clean stockings under her arm. She glanced at Rachel’s face, then at the inside of the cabin, as though making an inventory. There was little enough to take note of: the rug, the bed and its trundle where Jenny slept, Oggy’s cradle. They had already given everything else away; what they needed would be given back or built again if they returned.