He decided to press it. “You think maybe that could’ve been part of it?”
“Whatever my mother believed, it doesn’t mean I belong in a church any more than she ever did.”
“If Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary belonged, I think there might be a place for you.”
“I don’t know a single one of those women.”
“Rahab was a prostitute. Ruth slept at the feet of a man she wasn’t married to, on a public threshing floor. Bathsheba was an adulteress. When she found she was pregnant, her lover plotted the murder of her husband. And Mary became pregnant by Someone other than the man she was betrothed to marry.”
Angel stared at him. “I didn’t know you made a habit of running with fast women.”
Michael laughed. “They’re named in the lineage of Christ. In the beginning of the book of Matthew.”
“Oh,” she said blandly and gave him a resentful glance. “You think you can march me right into a corner, don’t you? Well, tell me something. If all that garbage is true, why didn’t the priest speak to my mother? It seems she fit right in to such exalted company.”
“I don’t know, Amanda. Priests are only men. They’re not God. They come with their own personal prejudices and faults just like anyone else.” He snapped the reins lightly over the horses’ backs. “I’m sorry about your mother, but I’m worried about you.”
“Why? Are you afraid if you don’t save my soul, I’ll go to hell?”
She was mocking him. “I think you’ve had a good taste of it already.” He snapped the reins again. “I don’t plan on preaching at you, but I don’t plan on giving up what I believe, either. Not to make you comfortable. Not for anything.”
Her fingers tightened around the brace. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“Not in so many words, but there’s a certain pressure brought to bear on a man when his wife is sitting and waiting outside in a wagon.”
“How about when a man drags his wife into church?”
He glanced at her. “I guess you’ve got a point. I’m sorry.”
She looked straight ahead again and bit her lip. Letting out a shaky breath, she said, “I couldn’t stay inside, Michael. I just couldn’t.”
“Not this time, maybe.”
“Not ever.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I sit with the same children who called me foul names? They’re all the same. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the docks of New York or a muddy hillside in California.” She gave a bleak laugh. “There was a boy whose father visited Mama at the shack. He was real regular. His son would call Mama and me names, obscene names. So I told him where his father was on Wednesday afternoons. He didn’t believe me, of course, and Mama said I had done a terrible, cruel thing to him. I couldn’t see how the truth would make things worse, but a few days later, out of curiosity I guess, that boy followed his father and found out for himself it was true. I thought, now there, he knows, and he’ll leave me and Mama alone. But no. He hated me after that. He and his nice little friends used to wait at the end of the alley, and when I would go to market for Mama, they would throw garbage on me. And every Sunday morning I would see them in mass, all scrubbed and dressed up and sitting by their papas and mamas.” She looked up at Michael. “The priest spoke to them. No, Michael. I won’t sit in a church. Not ever.”
Michael took her hand again and wove his fingers with hers. “God had nothing to do with it.”
Her eyes felt strangely hot and gritty. “He didn’t stop it either, did he? Where’s the mercy you’re always reading about? I never saw any given to my mother.” Michael was silent for a long time after that.
“Did anyone ever say anything nice to you?”
Her mouth curved into a wry smile. “A lot of men said I was pretty. They said they were just waiting for me to grow up.” Her chin jerked up and she glanced away.
Her hand was cold in his. For all her defiance, he felt her pain. “What do you see when you look in the mirror, Amanda?”
She didn’t answer for a long time, and when she did, she spoke so softly, he almost didn’t hear. “My mother.”
They stopped by a stream. While Michael unharnessed the horses and hobbled them, Angel laid out the blanket and opened the basket. Joseph’s cook had supplied them with bread, cheese, a bottle of cider, and some dried fruit. When Michael finished eating, he stood and put his hand up on an overhanging branch. He seemed in no hurry to hitch up his horses and get back on the road.
Angel watched him. His blue wool shirt pulled taut across his shoulders, and his waist was lean and hard. She remembered Torie’s fascination and was beginning to understand. She liked to look at him. He was strong and beautiful without being threatening. When he glanced back at her, she looked away and pretended to be busy putting the things back into the basket.
Michael shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the massive trunk. “I’ve been called a few names in my time, too, Amanda. Most of them hurled by my own father.”
She looked up at him again. “Your father?”
He looked out over the river. “My family had the biggest plantation in the district. The land was passed down from my grandfather. We had slaves. I didn’t think much about having them when I was a boy. It was just the way things were. Mother told me that they were our people and we were to take care of them, but when I was ten, we had a bad year, and my father sold off some of the workers. When they were taken away, one of our house slaves disappeared. I can’t even tell you her name. My father went after her. When he came back, he had two bodies strapped over a horse, hers and one of the workers he had sold. He dumped the bodies in front of the slave quarters and strung them up so they had to see them every time they went out to the fields. It was a gruesome sight. He had turned the dogs loose on them.”
He put his head back against the bark of the massive old oak. “I asked him why he had to do that, and he said it was to make an example of them.”
She had never seen him so pale, and a new emotion stirred inside her. She wanted to go to him and put her arms around him. “Did your mother feel the same way he did?”
“My mother wept, but she never said a word against my father. I told him the first thing I would do when he died was free our slaves. It was the first beating he ever gave me. He said if I was so enamored of them I could live with them for a while.”
“Did you?”
“For a month. Then he ordered me back to the house. By then, my life had really changed. Old Ezra brought me to the Lord. Up until then, God was just a Sunday morning exercise my mother carried out in the parlor. Ezra showed me how real God is. My father would have sold him if he hadn’t been so old. He freed him instead. It was a worse fate. The old man had nowhere to go, so he moved out into the swamps. I used to go out and see him every chance I got and bring him what I could.”
“And your father?”
“He tried other ways of turning my thinking around.” His mouth curved wryly. “He wanted me to know the full privileges of ownership.” He looked at her. “A beautiful, young slave girl of my own to use any way I wanted. I told her to go, but she wouldn’t. My father had ordered her to stay. So I left.” He laughed softly and shook his head. “That’s not completely honest. Actually, I fled. I was fifteen, and she was more of a temptation than I could handle.”
Michael came and hunkered down in front of her. “Amanda, my father wasn’t all bad. I don’t want you to think that of him. He loved the land, and he did take care of his people. Other than that one time, he was decent to the slaves he owned. He loved my mother and my brothers and sisters. And he loved me. He just wanted everything his own way. And there was something about me from the very beginning.… I didn’t fit the mold. I knew someday I’d have to cut out on my own, but it was a long time before I had the courage to leave everyone I loved behind, especially when I didn’t know where I was going.”
She raised her eyes to his. “Do you ever think about going back?”
“No.” There was no doubt in his expression.
“You must have hated him.”
He looked at her solemnly. “No. I loved him, and I’m grateful he was my father.”
“Grateful? He treated you like a slave, took away your inheritance, your family, everything. And you’re grateful?”
“Without all that, I might never have come to know the Lord, and in the end, my father had more reason to hate me,” Michael said. “When I left, Paul and Tess came with me. Tessie was special to him. Very special. And now she’s dead.”
Angel saw the tears in his eyes. He didn’t try to hide them.
“She would have liked you,” he said, reaching out and touching her cheek. “She could see into people.” Without thinking, Angel put her hand over his, moved by his sadness. His smile made her heart twist. “Oh, beloved,” he said. “Your walls are coming down.”
She took her hand away. “Joshua blowing his horn.”
He laughed. “I love you,” he said. “I love you very much.” He drew her into his arms and lay back with her in the grass. Rolling her beneath him, he kissed her gently at first, then more thoroughly. She felt a quickening inside her, a soft, warm curling in her belly, yet she felt neither threatened nor used. When he drew back slightly, she saw the look in his eyes. Oh.
“Sometimes I forget what I’m waiting for,” he said huskily. He stood, drawing her up with him. “Come on. I’ll hitch up the horses.”
Bemused, Angel folded the blanket and put the basket back beneath the seat. Resting her arms on the side of the wagon, she watched Michael bring the horses back. There was power in the way he moved. As he harnessed the horses, she watched the strength of his shoulders and hands. Straightening, he turned to her. He lifted her to the high seat and stepped up beside her. When he took the reins he smiled at her, and without the least hesitation, she found herself smiling back.
It began to rain as they traveled. Michael stopped to put up the canvas while she wrapped herself in the blanket. When he sat with her again, he put a second blanket around them both. She felt comfortably snug next to him.
Five miles down the road, they came upon a broken-down covered wagon. A haggard man and woman were trying to raise it enough to put on a repaired wheel. Nearby, sheltered beneath a massive oak, a dark-haired girl hugged four small children around her.
Michael pulled the team off the road. “Fetch those children and have them sit in the back of the wagon,” he said to Angel as he got down. She went for them. The oldest girl looked but a few years younger than she. Her dark hair was plastered about a pale face dominated by wide brown eyes. When she smiled, she was pretty.
“You’ll all be dryer if you sit in the back of the wagon,” Angel said. “We have another blanket.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” the girl said, taking up the invitation immediately as she hurried the children to the wagon’s shelter. Full of trepidation, Angel climbed up into the back with them. She handed the girl a blanket, and she draped it around her shoulders while tucking the four smaller children in close to her like a mother hen.
She smiled at Angel. “We’re the Altmans. I’m Miriam. This is Jacob—” she looked at the tallest boy, whose eyes and hair were like hers—“he’s ten. And Andrew—”
“I’m eight!” the boy volunteered somberly.
Miriam smiled again. “This is Leah,” she said, snuggling the bigger girl close and then kissing the smallest, “and Ruth.”
Angel looked at the cold, wet group huddled together beneath a single blanket. “Hosea,” she said self-consciously. “I’m… Mrs. Hosea.”
“Thank the Lord you came when you did,” Miriam said. “Papa was having trouble with that wheel, and Mama is just about done in.” She took the blanket off herself and settled it around the four children. “Would you watch over the children, Mrs. Hosea? Mama’s been ill for the past three hundred miles, and she shouldn’t be out in the rain.”
She jumped down from the wagon before Angel could protest. Angel looked at the children again and saw they were all staring at her with wide, curious eyes. A few moments later, Miriam returned with her mother. She was a worn, dark-haired woman with stooped shoulders and shadowed eyes. The children closed around her protectively.
“Mama,” Miriam said, an arm around her, “this is Mrs. Hosea. This is my mother.”
The woman smiled warmly and nodded. “Elizabeth,” she said with a smile. “God bless you, Mrs. Hosea.” Tears gathered in the tired eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “I don’t know what we would’ve done if you and your husband hadn’t come along.” She put her arms around her four children while Miriam peered out to see if the men needed assistance. “Everything’s going to be fine. Papa and Mr. Hosea are fixing the wagon. We’ll be on our way soon.”
“Do we have to go to Oregon?” Leah whimpered.
Pain flickered in the woman’s face. “Let’s not think about it right now, dear. We’ll take one day at a time.”
Angel fumbled in the basket. “Are you hungry? We’ve bread and some cheese.”
“Cheese!” Leah said, her small face brightening, the long journey to Oregon forgotten. “Oh, yes, please.”
Tears did come then, and Elizabeth wept. Miriam stroked her and murmured to her. Mortified, Angel didn’t know what to say or do. Not looking at the weeping woman, she cut slices of cheese for the smaller children. Elizabeth coughed again, and her crying stopped. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re worn out,” Miriam said. “It’s the fever,” she told Angel. “She hasn’t had any strength since it hit her.”
Angel held out a wedge of cheese and bread, and Elizabeth touched her hand tenderly before taking it. Little Ruth pushed off her mother’s lap and stood in front of her. Angel felt alarmed and then surprised when the child reached out and touched the golden braid that had slipped over her shoulder and hung to her waist. “Angel, Mama?” Heat flooded Angel’s face.
Elizabeth smiled through her tears. Her soft laugh was full of pleasure. “Yes, darling. An angel of mercy.”
Angel could not look at them. What would Elizabeth Altman say if she knew the truth? She got up and went to the back of the wagon to peer out. Michael had raised the Altmans’ wagon, and the man was fitting the wheel. She wanted to get out of the wagon, but the rain was coming now in sheets—Michael would just send her back. Every muscle in her body was taut when she looked back at Elizabeth with her adoring children all around her.
Miriam took her hand, startling her. “They’ll have it fixed in no time,” she said. Her eyes flickered with surprise and embarrassment when Angel pulled her hand free in haste.
Mr. Altman appeared at the back of the wagon, rain running off his hat.
“Is everything all right, John?” Elizabeth said.
“It’ll be good for a ways.” He tipped the brim of his hat to Angel as Elizabeth made the introduction. “We’re much obliged to you and your husband, ma’am. I was almost done in until your husband came.” He looked to his wife again. “Mr. Hosea’s invited us to winter at his place. I said yes. We’ll head for Oregon in spring.”
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, the relief clearly apparent.
Angel’s lips parted. Winter at Michael’s? Nine people in a fifteen-by-fifteen foot cabin? Elizabeth touched her, and she jumped. She sat stunned as the woman thanked her before John lifted her out. The boys and girls followed, then Miriam, who touched her shoulder in passing and flashed her a warm, excited smile. Teeth gritted, Angel sat huddled in her blanket in the back of the wagon, wondering what on earth Michael thought he was going to do with all these people. He climbed into the seat, soaked to the skin, and she handed him the spare blanket as they set off again.
“We’ll let them have the cabin,” he said.
“The cabin! Where are we supposed to sleep?”
“In the barn. We’ll be comfortable and warm.”
“Why don’t they sleep in the barn? You built the cabin.” Sh
e didn’t much like the idea of sleeping anywhere but in that nice, snug bed with the fire close by.
“They haven’t slept in a house in over nine months. And that woman’s sick.” He nodded ahead. “I’ve been thinking. There’s a good strip of land bordering Paul’s. Maybe I can talk the Altmans into staying. It’d be a good thing having another family in the valley.” He glanced at her with a smile. “You could use women friends around.”
Friends? “What do you suppose I have in common with them?”
“Why don’t we wait and find out?”
They camped beside an outcropping of granite that gave them shelter from the rain. Michael and John hobbled the horses and pitched a tent while Angel, Elizabeth, and Miriam set up camp. The children gathered enough wood to last the night and brought some of it to Miriam, where she and the others were gathered in the tent. She opened a small flap at the ceiling. “Learned this from the Indians,” she said with a grin as she built a fire inside a wash tub right inside the tent. Amazingly, the smoke went up and out the hole.
Elizabeth looked so worn out, Angel insisted she lie down. Michael brought some of their supplies in, and she put together a meal. Still awake, Elizabeth was silent, watching her. Troubled, Angel glanced at her, wondering what she was thinking.
“I feel so useless,” Elizabeth said tremulously, and Miriam bent to stroke her face gently.
“Nonsense, Mama. We can manage. You rest.” She gave her an impish grin. “When you’re better, we’ll let you do it all by yourself again.” Her mother smiled at the tender teasing. “I’ll get some heavier wood,” Miriam said and went out. She came back with a large chunk and stacked it with the kindling. “The rain’s letting up.”
Elizabeth pushed herself up. “Where are the boys?”
“Papa’s got them. Leah and Ruth will stay put right here. You’ve no need to worry. Now, lie down again, Mama.” She looked at Angel. “She’s always worried about Indians,” she whispered. “A little boy wandered away from the wagons a hundred miles shy of Fort Laramie. There was no trace of him. Ever since then, Mama’s been terrified one of us would be kidnapped.” She glanced back at her mother resting on the pallet. “She’ll get better now that she can rest.”