These people were city folk or from good-sized towns. In England they had been craftsmen for the most part, gentry some of them, and the parks or woodlands of England were vastly different from these primeval forests, or so I heard from my father, Jeremy Ring, and the others at our settlement on Shooting Creek.
We went back to the settlement. The man with Max Bauer was a small, quick-moving man with sandy, tufted eyebrows and a quick, ratlike way about him. His name was not mentioned, and I deemed him judged of no consequence, yet I did not feel so myself. It is such men of whom one must be forever wary, for they live in the shadow of greater or seemingly greater men, often eaten by jealousy or hatred, not necessarily of those whom they serve.
We stopped at the Penney’s, and the rest went on, but Macklin and I went in and sat down to a glass of cider, cold from hanging in the well.
Anna Penney was filled with questions about Temperance, so I told her much of our life at Shooting Creek. “Our settlement is at the foot of the mountains. The water is very clear, cold, and good there. We have a dozen cabins, a stockade, and several of us are good farmers. So far the crops have been good, and there are berries in the forest and many roots. All of our men are hunters, and there is much game.”
“Your family is there?”
“My father was killed by the Senecas, and my mother is in England. She was wishful that my sister not grow up in the wilderness, and my brother Brian wished to read for the law.
“You must not worry about Temperance. She is much loved and is one of us. We do not have a church, for services have always been conducted in our homes. I fear by your standards ours are not much. Rarely do they last longer than half an hour.
“She has good friends amongst us. Jeremy and Lila Ring are there. They came with my family. Jeremy was a soldier and a gentleman.”
“I have heard of Jamestown. It was to Virginia the first settlers here were going, but they came ashore sooner than expected.”
“Jamestown is far from us. We came up the rivers through Carolina.”
She left the house, and Macklin and I sat alone. He seemed uneasy. Several times he cleared his throat as if to speak. He was a tall, quiet, scholarly-looking man.
Putting down my glass, I said, “Tell me about your daughter.”
He looked at me strangely, but he did not speak for a moment. Then he said, “Why? What is it you wish to know?”
“To find them I must understand them. A track is not only marks upon the earth. If she is a prisoner, she must do what she is told, but if she is not, or if she gets away, I must understand her thinking. She may have been taken. We know nothing.”
“Do you doubt it?”
“All is surmise. Nobody saw Indians take her.”
He took a swallow from his mug, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “She is a fine girl,” he said, “a fine, honest girl.”
“Most maids of her years are already wed,” I commented.
He looked straight at me, his eyes hard. “She had many offers. Why Joseph Pittingel himself—”
“He wished to marry her?”
“He spoke of it. Joseph Pittingel is a wealthy man.”
“She refused him?”
“She did, in a way. She just, well, she just looked at him and walked away.”
I decided I liked Diana Macklin. “Yet there was little search made for them. Was something wrong?”
He sat silent, his lips firming in a stubborn line. He liked not the trend of the conversation but seemed to realize my need to know. “After all, you will hear it soon or late.” He looked around at me. “There is always talk in these small settlements when someone is different. She liked none of the young men, although she was gracious and sweet to the older ones. I suspect it was that only which saved her from being called up. Some said she was a witch! My daughter, a witch!”
“I have no faith in witches,” I replied, “nor in the devil, for that matter.”
“Be careful of what you say,” Macklin warned. “It is well nigh as sinful not to believe in the devil as not to believe in God!”
“Could she have gone away of her own free will? Seeing the attitude around her—and she seems a girl of uncommon intelligence—could she have decided to go and simply not return?”
He considered that, then shook his head. “No. Had she been alone, she might have gone away, but she would not take Carrie with her.
“Carrie loved her like a sister, and they were much together, but Diana would never have taken her from her family. Also,” he added, “Diana would have waited until spring. Midsummer is not a good time to begin such a journey, and Diana is a girl to think of such things. She was never impulsive but very cool. She thought things through to their conclusion.”
“What of Diana’s mother?”
“Diana’s mother is dead. She died in England when Diana was a small child.”
Someone approached the door. Anna Penney returning from wherever she had been. I got up. “Shall we go to your place? We must talk more of this.”
Reluctantly, he got to his feet as Anna entered. She came at once to me. “You will find my Carrie for me? You and Yance? When she was gone, the others would not look, and I knew what they believed, yet I have always loved Diana. I never believed any of the things they said. It was just that she—”
“She what?”
“She loved the night. Our parson has said that witches love the night, that they meet in the forest in old caves, ruined buildings, and that they keep to darkness and the shadows.”
We crossed the lane to Macklin’s cabin, spotless in its neatness. We sat at the table, and he looked out the open door.
“Our house is empty without her,” he said. “I have been much alone, and she cared for me. I have some small skill with tools, but I am happier with my books. She read them, also, and we talked long hours.”
My eyes went to the small row of books. The Complete Gentleman, by Peacham, stood beside Barrough’s Method of Physic and Michael Dalton’s Country Justice. Although I knew them by name only, I had seen them in Jamestown. Bacon’s Essays and his Advancement of Learning I knew well. They had been among the last batch of books brought up from the coast. “I see some old friends yonder,” I said.
His expression changed. “You have read them?”
“Bacon,” I said, “and much else. My father was a reader of books, and our teacher was a very great scholar. He was Sakim.”
“An infidel?”
“Some would call him so. I would not.”
“How can you hope to find them? Not even Max Bauer could, and he is our best in the woods.”
Slowly I got to my feet. I knew much that I had wished to know. If Pequots had the girls, they might be dead by now, but I did not believe it.
“Those others who disappeared? All were girls?”
“Yes, but that means nothing. A lad would have found his way back. But a girl?” He shrugged.
“Diana, they say, was very much at home in the woods.”
“She was different.”
I walked to the door. “I will find them, Macklin, but what of you? Should you stay on here? There is suspicion, and if what I hear of your people is true, she would be risking much to return.”
He looked at me, then shook his head. “How far can one go? And where can one stop? Is there no place in which to rest?”
“You’ve been through this before?”
He shrugged. “It is ever the same. And it is my fault. She was reared by me. I could have made her another way, and she would have been like other girls.” He frowned suddenly. “But I was a fool. I did not want her like others. I wanted her to be like herself.”
“And like her mother?” I asked.
The eyes he turned toward me were the eyes of a man who had been through hell. There was pain there and fear, anger, resignation—I knew not what, only that he was a man suddenly without hope.
“So you know? I guess I always knew there would be a time. I knew someone would come who knew.”
He stared at me, then the floor. “My God, what will we do now?”
CHAPTER IV
Thunderous knocking on the door interrupted whatever might have been said. Macklin went to the door, and I stood back, expecting anything.