Flashman and Madison's War Page 7

  “Did you hit him with something?” I whispered to Johnson as he crawled up beside me.

  “No, he saw me and snatched up that great cannon of his. Then he fired it and fell back in the boat. Missed me by yards,” the warrior added grinning. The boat was slowly turning in the current and at that moment the girl stood up in the boat and looked at the shore. It was the first time I saw her face and it literally took my breath away. She was the most beautiful woman I think I ever saw. Her starched white bonnet had been dislodged and her long blonde hair moved in the gentle breeze. Even from that distance her eyes sparkled as she nervously scanned the shore. She spoke a few words to the man in the bows, who, I saw now, had his arm in a sling. Then she started to move back to her seat in the stern. The plain smock dress that she wore did nothing for her figure but its drabness only seemed to exaggerate her beauty.

  “What a magnificent woman,” I breathed.

  “She is probably going to that foreign settlement up river,” said Black Eagle. “They dress in those plain clothes.”

  “What foreign settlement?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” replied Black Eagle. “They do not mix with our people.”

  “I have got to meet her,” I whispered.

  “Their boat is in shallow water,” whispered Black Eagle. “Their gun has fired; we can drag them ashore.” The big warrior and Johnson were just starting to get up to do precisely that, when I hissed for them to stay still. The bush had moved as they had tried to rise and the oarsman had seen the disturbance. He was squinting in our direction and then I saw him grin before pulling once more on his oars as the woman settled back in her seat.

  “Dammit, I think the oarsman has seen us.”

  “Don’t worry,” soothed Johnson. “That’s old Renton. He makes his living rowing up and down the river. He often calls into our village for meat and sometimes fetches supplies. He knows we will not harm him.”

  “But if we are not going to drag the boat ashore,” interrupted Black Eagle, “how are you going to meet the woman?”

  “Ah,” I grinned. “We need to engineer the right kind of introduction and I think that you are just the fellows to help.”

  The boat made slow progress against the current of the river and it was easy for us to get upstream and well ahead. So it was that an hour after we first saw them, Renton and his passengers came under a second Indian attack. They had just rounded a bend in the river when the air was rent with several different war cries, one slightly hoarse. Then from out of the trees burst two Indians with their muskets and tomahawks held aloft, wet river mud on their faces and screaming fit to burst. One had emerged slightly behind the little craft and the other ahead, it was looking grim for the boat occupants and a scream from the woman was almost lost in the general din. The injured man in the bows was standing and seemed to be trying to climb out. Only the oarsman looked unperturbed, a puzzled smile on his face. Cue the gallant Flashy.

  “Leave that woman alone, you villains!” I roared as I emerged from the trees, holding my musket and with a pistol shoved in my belt. Black Eagle, now standing on a little promontory over the water, swung his rifle to cover me and fired. While still on the run towards the boat I pointed my musket in his direction and pulled the trigger. The gun banged with an impressive amount of gun smoke. A blood-curdling shriek came from Black Eagle as he clutched his chest and tottered unsteadily on his rock for several seconds before toppling backwards into the water. There was another splash as the man in the bow of the boat also fell in the river. But now Smoke Johnson charged towards me, determined to avenge his comrade and still shrieking his hideous cries. I pulled the pistol from my belt and when he was still twenty yards off I fired. Once again the Indian clutched his chest and gave a pitiful wail before pitching down onto his knees. He held out a hand to me in mute appeal, and then made a strange gargling noise before falling forward onto the soft river bank, his legs spasming death throes as he fell. It was possibly the worst piece of overacting I had ever seen, but we were not finished yet. I pushed the pistol back in my belt, drew my sword and turned to the empty forest. “Let that be a lesson to you,” I shouted, “unless any more of you want a taste of cold steel.”

  My threats were interrupted by another splash and I looked round to see that the woman had now jumped into the water too.

  “Quickly, Lobster,” whispered Smoke Johnson’s ‘corpse’. “Get the silly woman before she drowns.”

  I did not need telling twice. After all this effort to stage our charade it would be the ultimate irony if such a beauty was lost as a result. I splashed through the shallows; I could see her still bonneted head in the water. She seemed to be fighting with the other man who had jumped out of the boat. Renton was standing in his craft and had thrown the end of a rope in their direction. The boat was drifting in the current and the water was only waist deep when I reached it. I threw the musket, pistol, ammunition bag and my sword inside before plunging after the struggling couple.

  The man evidently could not swim and was out of his depth. He was thrashing about and when he grabbed hold of the girl he kept pushing her under in an effort to keep himself afloat. The girl was twisting away and trying to swim up behind the man to grab him, but that was almost impossible as he was panicking and flailing about. I grabbed the rope floating on the water and swam up to them. The girl had lost her bonnet now and her gold hair splayed out in the water behind her. She was gasping for breath after another dunking from the floundering man.

  “Here, take this,” I shouted, offering her the rope. I heard the oars creak as Renton brought the boat up behind me. The girl turned towards the boat as the drowning man grabbed hold of my left arm. I went under the water once, but my right hand was already reaching for the tomahawk that was still in my belt. As we both emerged from the water again my right hand was gripping the shaft with the brass pipe bowl facing the water, I brought it down smartly behind the man’s ear. That put a stop to his struggling and while he was still stunned I dragged him up to the boat’s gunwale. Renton reached down, grabbed his arms and hauled him up over the side while the girl trod water alongside the boat. Close to and wet, she looked even more radiant. I was not sure it was just the water making me breathless.

  She looked at me and then modestly lowered her gaze. “Thank you, sir, for your help,” she gasped.

  “Oh it was nothing, you know,” I claimed offhandedly. “All in a day’s work for a soldier.”

  “You ready to come aboard, miss?” called Renton from above, before reaching down under her arms and hauling her upwards. If the plain drab shift had done nothing for her figure when it was dry, by Christ when it was wet it could have brought a city to a standstill. I watched in wonder as her soaked form rose before me with the wet cloth clinging to her breasts and buttocks like a second skin. I floated in awe for a moment, thanking God that the water was cold enough to subdue any sign of obvious interest. As the girl settled back in her seat I swung a leg up over the side. Renton reached down and helped pull me aboard and then made room for me to sit beside him on the central thwart. The girl was quickly pulling the shift away from her body to try to make herself look less exposed.

  “We must go ashore, I need to change my clothes.” She spoke good English but I detected a foreign accent, perhaps Austrian. I struggled to tear my eyes away from her and glanced over my shoulder, where the other man lay almost forgotten in the bows of the boat. He was whimpering quietly and clutching his head with his good arm while he had already put the other back in the sodden sling around his neck.

  I looked at Renton, who, like me, was similarly distracted. “We cannot go ashore here, miss,” he protested. Those savage Indians will kill us all. You will just have to stay as you are for a while, I am afraid.” I was pretty sure that he was not remotely ‘afraid’ at all. In fact he licked his lips with delight at the prospect.

  “What about that island upstream?” The girl pointed over my shoulder and looking once more I saw a small island with a ha
ndful of trees and bushes on it in the middle of the river. “Surely there cannot be Indians on that.” Renton grudgingly conceded that it was unlikely to be infested with hostile warriors. Taking an oar each, we reluctantly rowed until the little boat beached on what was little more than a mud bank with vegetation. The girl opened her trunk and rummaged for fresh, dry clothes. Renton and I had disembarked, ostensibly to pull the craft further out of the water, but we were both hoping for a chance to lift the girl out of the boat. To our disappointment she nimbly jumped out by herself and disappeared behind some thick foliage at the very far side of the island.

  Renton spat some tobacco juice onto the sand. “You tell Smoke Johnson that his dying act was the worst piece of dumb play that I ever saw.”

  I grinned and nodded to the trees. “If things go to plan I am rather hoping that you will see Johnson before me.”

  “I thought that was your game,” grunted Renton. “But you are wasting your time there. I am taking her up to where the river forks to meet her new husband. He is some kind of pastor and she is another religious type. She keeps reading her Bible and quoting the commandments.” I hid my disappointment by asking about the third occupant of the boat. “Oh he is just some lad her father hired to keep her safe. Damn fool overloaded the gun and now his shoulder is broke.” Renton glanced inside the boat where the young man was still lying grey-faced in the bow and laughed. “Damn me, but was he scared witless of your Indian friends, though.”

  “The girl swims well,” I pointed out.

  “Aye, she has courage I’ll say that for her. She did not hesitate when she saw the lad could not swim.” We chatted on for a while. Renton had heard that a British soldier had been staying at the Iroquois village and had spotted all three of us when we had first seen the boat. Then we heard Magda coming back through the bushes. The girl emerged wearing another of her shapeless smocks and bonnets with a bundle of wet clothes in her hand. Her figure was once more obscured, but I did not mind. The image of her being pulled from the water was still seared into my memory, indeed even now over thirty years later I can see it as clearly as if it were yesterday.

  “Captain Thomas Flashman, ma’am,” I saluted smartly. “I do not believe I yet have the honour of your name.”

  “It is Magdalena Dietrich,” she replied smiling demurely. “But most people call me Magda.” We helped her back into the boat and then Renton and I pushed off and resumed our places at the oars.

  “Do I detect an accent in your English, Magda?” I asked as we started rowing again upstream. “Are your parents Austrian?”

  “I come from a Mennonite community in Pennsylvania.”

  “Oh,” I replied. It was a term I had not heard before. “So, er, where is Mennononia?”

  She laughed. “It is not a place, it is a church. We are what you would probably call puritans; we observe the Ten Commandments and try to live a simple life of devotion to our Lord. Most of our families came from Holland and the neighbouring German states. I was born in Pennsylvania but we speak German within the community.”

  “Born here, eh?” I said. “Was that a long time ago?”

  She smiled at my clumsy enquiry at her age. “I am nineteen years old, Captain.”

  “That is old for getting married in these parts,” cried Renton with all the tact of a myopic bull in a porcelain factory.

  “My mother died, and I had to help my father bring up my brothers and sisters. Pastor Johannes is an old friend of my father’s and when his wife died my father betrothed me to him.”

  “So you have not met your new husband yet, then?” I probed.

  “No, he is establishing a new community here. It does not even have a name yet.”

  We got to the nameless place an hour later. It seemed abandoned. There was just a rough wooden jetty, a water mill that looked like it had not been used in months, a small hut and a track leading into the forest.

  “Did your husband know you were coming?” I asked.

  “Yes,” replied Magda, struggling and failing to hide her disappointment in her new home. “He told me the farm was down the track. I will leave the luggage here and go off to find it.”

  “I could not possibly leave you alone here,” I told her. “There are all sorts of dangers in the forest.” I turned back to the boatman and winked. “Renton will have to take your companion back so that he can get his shoulder seen to, but I would be happy to stay and escort you.

  “That’s right, ma’am,” piped up Renton. “I will need to take the lad to Brant’s Ford. That is the nearest place where there is a healer.” I grinned; Brant’s Ford was the name of the Indian village that I was living at. I doubted the young man would find being treated by the wrinkled old medicine women there, with her pots and potions, that relaxing.

  “Please don’t trouble yourself, Captain, I am sure I will be fine.” Magda walked hesitantly off the end of the jetty onto the grassy, overgrown track.

  “Ma’am, you do not know this country. This is still Indian territory; I could not possibly leave you here undefended.”

  She turned to face me again, looking pale. “Sir, you are a soldier and I know you will think differently but Mennonites do not believe in violence; we do not fight and we do not kill. It says in the Bible,” she added holding the book with a white-knuckled grip to her chest, “that whoever sheds human blood will have their blood shed, for in the image of God has God made mankind.” She took a deep breath before adding, “If it is God’s will that I die here today then so be it.”

  I suppressed a smile; she was obviously frightened, but trying to cling on to tenets that she had been taught in some nice safe church in Pennsylvania. “You don’t understand,” I said as I buckled on my sword and picked up my weapons. “If the Indians find you they will use you in the basest way and then they will take that pretty gold hair. Have you heard of scalping?”

  She obviously had as she quivered deliciously with fear. Then the poor girl glanced nervously around as though a savage could be hidden behind every bush. “Perhaps your company would deter the Indians,” she conceded. “But please, we must avoid any bloodshed.”

  “I will do my best to avoid killing any Indians,” I promised her. “Now, do you know how far inland this farm is? It will be getting dark soon and we might be better spending the night in that cabin than out in the open in the forest. Campfires can be seen for miles.” I was in no rush to deliver Magda to her new husband, at least not before I had spent some time with her. So as Renton pushed off down-stream, Magda and I carried her heavy trunk to the cabin and tried to make ourselves comfortable for the night. I managed to shoot a rabbit as some of the fine powder I used for hunting was still dry in the powder horn. My tobacco was wet, though, and I left that drying out near the fire that Magda built in the hearth. Near to the mill I found an apple tree and some berry bushes, so by nightfall we had meat roasting and fruit to go with it.

  “How old is your husband?” I asked as I cut the meat for us to eat.

  “A little older than my father – probably around fifty.”

  “Do you know what he looks like?”

  She looked sad as she bit down on the first piece of meat. “He will have a beard and my father says that he has crinkly hair, but he has not seen Johannes for many years.”

  “Is an old bearded man what you were hoping for in a husband?”

  She stiffened at that. “It is not seemly to discuss such things with a strange man.”

  We ate in silence for a while and then I spoke up. “It seems to me that now is absolutely the right time to talk about such things. Once you are married it will be too late.”

  “I have to marry him,” she said quietly. “It is an honour to marry a pastor and if I do not my father will be shamed and I would be shunned by the community.”

  I gave her one of the apples and then tested my tobacco drying on the hearth. It was not bone dry but it needed some moisture to smoke well. Magda watched as I pulled my tomahawk from my belt and carefully packed t
he pipe bowl. Then I lit it with a spill from the fire and sat back, breathing in the fragrant smoke. “Have you been with a man before or will the pastor be your first?”

  She looked shocked, “It is not seemly to discuss such things.”

  “I see,” I replied calmly and puffed again on the tomahawk shaft. “This is an Indian tool,” I told her, “an axe and a smoking pipe combined. Have you smoked a pipe?” She shook her head, staring at the smoking bowl. I passed it over to her. “Suck the smoke to flavour your mouth; don’t take it down into your lungs.”

  She puffed hesitantly on the pipe and blew out the smoke before drawing on it more confidently again. “It tastes of flowers and mown grass and coffee and all sorts of things.”

  “It does,” I agreed and for a few minutes we smoked companionably passing the pipe between us without saying a word.

  “I have not been with a man before,” she broke the long silence.

  “I suspect that a fat old farmer was not who you imagined for your first time.”

  She looked at me and blushed a deep shade of pink before casting her eyes down again. “Please it is not…”

  “Seemly, yes I know. You like that word a lot, don’t you. Perhaps I should charge you an item of clothing every time you use it.”

  “You wouldn’t!” she exclaimed. “That would be…” I cocked an eyebrow and she seemed to go even redder before finishing. “That would be most ungallant.”

  “Have they at least told you what to expect?” I enquired. “When you are first with your husband.”

  “It says in the Bible, in Ephesians, that a wife must submit in everything to her husband and so I will do what my husband asks.”