To Capture Her Heart Read online

  Winnie looked from Mary to Heather Flower and back at Mary. “It is.”

  Heather Flower looked down at the fire, but the burning in her cheeks was not from the flame.

  Winnie took up her cause. “It is too difficult for my niece to live between the two worlds of her family and her friends for now. Let her spend time in Montauk before we have her back.”

  Benjamin sat down next to her. “I will miss you, but I think that is good. Mayhap I could come see you there.”

  She looked sideways at him. His face was soft again, understanding. He reached for her hand and she let him take it in his. “I will miss you too, my friend.”

  Patience’s giggle sounded like hundreds of little jingle shells. She hugged Heather Flower. “If anyone can get you back here, ’tis Ben, is it not?” Her blue eyes danced.

  “Now, Patience.” Lizzie shook her head, curls bouncing. “We all know how you like to see a good romance blossom, but give them time.” She glanced at her sister with a grin.

  Crinkles deepened around Mary’s hazel eyes. “Time and warmth, Patience. Like our dough. She needs time and warmth.”

  Heather Flower raised her chin. “I am more like the eaglet fallen from her nest than dough. My strong brother comes to scoop me and carry me back, but I will survive.”

  “That’s because you are a survivor, Heather Flower.” Benjamin squeezed her hand. “It is all right. I can wait. You will be back, I know. But I will not be happy until you are.” The last he said with a reassuring smile, which was his way. “Would you take a walk with me?”

  She stood and tugged at his hand in answer and didn’t even hear her friends make a peep as she and Benjamin started down a shaded trail.

  As they rounded a bend, Benjamin stopped and pulled her close. His warm breath tickled her ear. “May I come visit you?”

  She nestled her face into his shoulder. “Yes, my friend. I would be sad if you didn’t come. And my father and mother would be upset if you didn’t.” It would be so easy to love him as a wife. The Hortons and her parents had been friends from the time she could remember. Benjamin had always been so kind and caring. Her loyalty was with him, but where was her heart?

  “Well, they will be so relieved to have you back home.” He held her back and his baby-blue eyes sought hers. “Would you make me a promise?”

  She’d thought he was about to kiss her. “What promise, Benjamin?”

  “That you will wait for me? That you won’t go home and find someone else?”

  “Why do you ask for a promise? Do you think I am so simple that I would fall for the next man who would woo me? I have told you I am not ready to love, but don’t you think you will be the first I tell when I am?” Her cheeks burned and she took a breath to steady her voice.

  “Whoa. I didn’t it mean it that way at all. I am just glad you want me to come visit. And you don’t have to promise. You just gave me your word that at least you’ll let me know who the lucky man is.”

  “That is right, Benjamin. We should go back now.” She studied the path for a minute and then turned into him, her chin raised. “Could you kiss me first? I want to remember your kiss.”

  He bent and their lips met. His kiss was light at first, and gentle. As she returned his kiss, he drew her closer.

  “I am learning your English ways, nuk?”

  The time came for Heather Flower to carry her small cloth bag filled with her few possessions down to the bay. After many goodbyes, and a long hug from her dear aunt, she climbed into the long canoe and waited for her brother to follow. She had not thought about how she might feel about sitting in a blackened birchbark again, after her last ride of terror. Even the crossing on the ferry over the East River did not cause her to panic like this did. She clung to the side, her large dark eyes pinned on Benjamin.

  They pushed off and she watched as he stood waving. As he grew smaller in the distance, she at last let go of the side and raised her hand in a small farewell. He could not see it, she knew. But maybe that was best. She belonged with her people. Not the English or the Dutch. She turned in the canoe and spotted Fort Pond Bay, the entrance to Montauk, in the distance. But stepping back into the life she’d been dragged from seemed almost impossible.

  Thankfully, her mother left her alone with her thoughts much of the time, and she watched the labors of her tribe from a distance.

  The women were busy with gathering wood. They had a large store of seasoned wood—buried in the sandy ground all winter—but this was the time to gather new wood. Many others worked in the fields, breaking up the ground and getting ready to plant their corn, beans, and squash.

  By summer they would be wading in the shore, looking for the quahog, or clam shells, and the swirly whelk shells that the men would craft into wampum beads.

  As the daughter of the sachem, Heather Flower did not have to labor in the fields or search for shells, but she was allowed to make beads and wampum. She enjoyed grinding and drilling the beads and stitching them onto her tunics and headdresses. She made wampum belts too, and hers were highly prized.

  Today she worked on a star, cut from a soft piece of deerskin with her knife. She concentrated as she stabbed the bone needle into the hide, filling in the surface with tiny, dark purple beads. They glinted in the sunlight and she smiled at the pleasure her work gave her.

  She had told her mother about the story Benjamin’s mother liked to share. About how stars were little windows in heaven for the angels to peer down to earth and send their love and light. Aunt Winnie said it was just a story, and not from the white man’s Bible. But she and her mother liked it just the same.

  She’d also talked about Dirk and Benjamin with her mother, and as she listened to her counsel, her throat ached as if she’d swallowed splinters, and she’d held back tears. Her mother’s concerns were much more about their race being obliterated by intermarriage than about her heart and love. But if she married Dirk, or Benjamin, or any white man for that matter, wouldn’t there always be pieces of her in her children and their children? Could a race ever really be lost as long as the Great Spirit was over all?

  The laughter of young boys caught her attention and she looked up to see two young braves tussling with each other like young bear cubs. One looked so much like Keme when he was younger. She stared at him, and he glanced up and shot her a wide grin, then plowed into the stomach of his playmate and the two rolled in laughter to the ground. Recognition registered. It was Keme’s brother. He had six, and this one was the youngest.

  She looked at the star she’d made and gathered her tools and beads and stood to leave. She saw Keme’s mother bent over a piece of hide that she scraped with a shell. She walked over to the woman who mourned for him as much as she. She was plump with long braids to her waist, and she looked up with sad eyes as Heather Flower pressed the star into her hand. Turning it over and running her thick fingers over the shiny beads, she smiled, and it gave Heather Flower much pleasure to see her happy. Perhaps they both could heal, both be strong.

  “I am glad you are home, my child,” the older woman said. “You are what I have left of Keme.”

  “Yes. I know you are as sad as I am. You have been strong, and at times I feel I have been weak. I miss him very much.”

  “He hunts in the eternal forest and thinks of us as he runs. I will place this star on the pallet that holds his tomahawk and wampum belt.”

  “That would please me.” She patted the woman’s hand, then wandered down the path toward the bay. She came to the place she’d last seen Keme and turned to look at the exact spot where he was held before they killed him. She put her fists to her heart and beat rapidly several times and then held them up to the sky, her cheeks glistening with tears.

  She continued to the water’s edge and listened to the gentle lap of the water. A little red crab ran sideways between the yellow and orange shells. She’d felt like running when she’d first come home, like the crab, but confusion held her here. It should be good to be home. She wanted
it to be good.

  She heard footfalls behind her and turned to watch her brother make his way down to the beach. They both sat in silence as the sun sank to the west, casting a silvery glow across the bay. She should be glad to be home, comforted by the familiar and her family. So why did it feel like her heart was somewhere across the bay?

  21

  March 30, 1654

  Heather Flower sat on the beach, a bearskin blanket wrapped about her shoulders against the brisk March wind, and watched the men prepare their canoes. The northern right whales, done with spawning off the warm southern shores of the Atlantic coast, had begun their annual migration north.

  The men of her village were expert fishermen and for generations had paddled out beyond the surf to spear large fish. But the largest was the right whale, given its name from the Basque people of the north because it fed from the ocean surface, swam slowly, and was easy to spear. When it died, the carcass floated.

  Occasionally one would beach itself on the shore and die, and the tribe would have a ceremonial feast of the fin and tail, and trade the whalebone and oil to the English. But the whale hunters never waited for the whale to come to them. Their excitement was in the chase.

  Wyancombone tossed his bow, arrows, and a harpoon tipped with bone and attached to sinewy ropes into the bottom of his canoe. He was as fine a fisherman as the rest, and he took pride in his knowledge and skill. When Heather Flower was younger, she had begged her father to let her go on these expeditions, but he said no and she became accustomed to watching them from the beach until they disappeared on the horizon.

  She’d heard her brother’s stories enough to know they would swarm their canoes around their prey and attack with their weapons until the great fish could struggle no more. The English of Southampton were impressed with the Montauketts’ skill and brought in great fishing vessels with offers to the tribe’s fishermen to work onboard as crew.

  A few of the men had already accepted jobs in return for clothing and sailcloth, and even guns and rum. Benjamin would disapprove of that—the English had their laws regarding the supplying of guns and alcohol to the native people—but the fishing companies were exempt from such laws, so eager were they to hire the expertise of the Montauketts.

  The companies sent out two thirty-foot vessels at a time, each reinforced with cedar ribbing and equipped with iron harpoons, four oarsmen, a steersman, and a harpooner. It was dangerous work, even with the protection of the big ships and the additional crew, but not as perilous as hunting in the small canoe. Still, her brother was against working for the white man, even distrusted their motives, and continued to hunt the old way with his own primitive tools. Her father disagreed, though. He said that to have trust was a thing of honor, and that Lion Gardiner was his friend. He said they must learn to work side by side. But he was the first to agree that the commodities the white man had to offer them were things they did not need.

  Heather Flower stood up, put her hand above her eyes, and squinted east, into the sun. The canoes were specks where water met sky. The wind blew sand at her legs and she pulled the blanket tighter before she followed the path toward home. The incessant calling of gulls overhead drew her attention, and she watched a flock as they flew toward Shelter Island.

  She came to a curve in the path and skirted a mound of sand leading to a secluded spot that was her favorite retreat. She could sit, out of wind and sun, and listen as others passed by within feet of her without them ever knowing. She pulled her leather pouch out of the neckline of her tunic and emptied out the bone needle, some sinew, and a few beads. She untied her wampum belt and began stitching a row of beads at the end.

  As she stabbed the needle through the bead and into the deerskin, she wished her life could be sewn back together so easily. But Keme was not coming back—he could not be stitched back into the pattern of her life. She would sit here and sew until her brother came back.

  After killing the whale, they would tow it to the shore, something that could take hours. Once the fins, tail, and mouth bones were removed, the blubber was cut out. It was a long process and one she never stayed to watch. But she always liked to be at the water’s edge when Wyancombone’s canoe struggled in, dragline taut.

  At length she settled back into the sand and fell asleep. She dreamt of Keme and dancing, of flowers and feasting, and for a moment when she woke she thought she heard him calling. But it was her mother’s voice that broke through her dream, and she jumped and gathered her needles and pouch before running to the path.

  “Quashawam, where were you?” Her face was stricken, though her words were calm, stoic.

  “I was beyond the path, Mother. I came as soon as I heard you. Are you all right? Is something wrong?”

  Tears sprung to her mother’s eyes. “Wyancombone did not return with the men. There are ten missing. They threw their spears into a big whale, but it fought and pulled two canoes over. The water is freezing. Only six men were helped into the other canoes and came home. We don’t know what happened to your brother.”

  Heather Flower grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her toward the ocean shore. Her father was there, with the exhausted hunting party. He was preparing to leave with his own handpicked rescue party and Heather Flower ran into the surf.

  She grabbed her father’s hands. “Take me with you, please. I must help you find Wyancombone.”

  “No, my daughter. You must stay with your mother. She needs you and you would not be safe out there. I cannot lose my son and my daughter in one day.”

  She blinked the sting from her eyes and fell to her knees. “Please. I must go.”

  Wyandanch looked from her to her mother. “You must understand. Someday you might need to lead my people. If I am gone, and your brother is gone, it will fall to you to take care of your mother and all of our people. By staying behind, you are strong. Do this for me and your mother.”

  She pulled back, her head held high. “Find him, Father. Bring him home.” She waded back to her mother, the icy water biting her ankles. They embraced as they watched the men paddle out to sea. The crowd of villagers gathered round them and together they walked back to the village.

  She asked Keme’s mother to build up the fire and instructed an elder brave to put up a smoke signal after she sent their fastest runner to carry the news to Momoweta. She pulled her mother to her near the fire and listened as the medicine man began a chant. The wait began.

  All night they clung to each other. At dawn’s first light Benjamin arrived with Jack, a young Indian brave who lived on Shelter Island. He was called Jack by the Sylvesters, and Abooksigun by his people, and was a good friend of Wyancombone.

  “How did you know?”

  Benjamin swung down from Star, but his eyes never left hers. “I saw the smoke signals. I knew something was up. I came through Shelter Island, and Jack said he would come with me. When we came ashore, we talked with some of the boys that were playing along the path. They told us about Wyancombone and your father.”

  “There is nothing we can do but wait.”

  “No, I think we can do something. I’m going to ride to Southampton to get a whaling ship dispatched to look for them.”

  “Benjamin, I feel as lost as my brother. We must bring him back.”

  “We’ll take a full search party out.” He stepped close and brought her into his arms. “We’ll find him.”

  He nuzzled the top of her head and she looked up. His mouth lowered to hers and they shared a tender kiss. In that moment she knew if anyone could bring her brother back, it would be Benjamin. He was always there when she needed someone.

  “Nuk. Thank you, my friend.”

  She watched him leave, urging Star to a full gallop, Abooksigun close behind him.

  How long could Wyancombone survive in the water? Could someone have found him and picked him up? She had so many questions. What frightened her most, of course, was she knew the answers to her questions.

  Mr. Bennett granted the ship and crew requir
ed for a full search. Benjamin and Jack sailed with them, and as the wooden hulk, seeped in whale stench, pitched and slammed against the sea’s surface with the impending storm, Benjamin gripped the rough rail. How could he have thought for a minute he might long for the sailor’s life?

  As the ship lurched one more time and the rain began to pelt, his stomach revolted and Jack grabbed him as he heaved over the side of the ship. More miserable one could not be. Jack pulled him down the hatch and they settled onto a trunk tied to the planks of the lower deck. Benjamin lowered his forehead to his knees and tried to get a grip on his stomach. When he felt in control, he sat up.

  Jack handed him a rag and he wiped his face. “Some hero I am.” They both chuckled.

  “Your heart and mind are both trying—it is only your stomach that does not know how to follow.”

  “You are so right. Has anyone said if they think we are near where Wynacombone and the other men were lost? And has anyone seen Wyandanch?”

  “Not yet. I don’t think we are anywhere close.”

  He closed his eyes and a moan escaped. His stomach clenched and he pressed the rag to his lips, willing his insides to be still. He drew in a breath to clear his head.

  The storm picked up and sent waves over the rail, washing everything in their path across the slanted deck. They both stayed below, with Jack coming close to being as sick as he was.

  All he could think about was Wyancombone, Wyandanch, and himself all lost at sea, with no one there for Heather Flower. Why had he not stayed with her once he had the ship commissioned? And if Van Buren was as in love with her as he’d like to pretend, where was he? He needed to survive this, for Heather Flower. Please, God, help him survive.

  Hours passed with Jack and Benjamin heaving, their clothes waterlogged, and each clung to anything that seemed to be bolted down. Late in the afternoon the wind abated, the sun sent streaks of light between the clouds and the ship bobbed like cork on a placid lake.