Anne-Marie de Parthenay
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Spring came, and hope with it. The snows melted. The flowers began to bloom, and the birds began to sing. So did hers, the little black one with red-tipped wings.
Slowly but surely, she had nursed him back to health. His recovery was long and laborious. Day after day, Anne-Marie would venture out beyond the cave, searching for food and medicinal plants to make teas and balms for him. Night by night, she would stay at his side, brushing the sweat from his brow, petting his head gently to calm his feverish murmurs and sudden, frantic cries. And when the winds blew cold, when the rains beat down heavy and hard upon the cave, she wrapped herself around him, and him around her.
Dark were those days, when the boy’s fate hung on a knife’s edge. Dark when the girl couldn’t know what would come tomorrow, when death was a bed-fellow lurking in the shadowed recesses of that cave. Dark when surrender hung over both of them, their states dire and painful enough to nearly be seduced by that ever-beckoning phantom.
But just as night gave way to morning, the dark did not last. The boy survived the bouts of fever and malaise. Once he was strong enough to walk, he and the girl left that cave behind. Their only guide was the sun and the stars, but for the seasoned wayfarer Black Bird, that was enough. Their canoe long gone, they traveled on foot, trekking through the forests of the Five Nations. They stayed as discreet as they could—no longer did Black Bird attempt his dangerous reconnaissance of Iroquois towns. Rather, they stayed as far from civilization as they could, not risking capture again. Anne-Marie tried to study her companion’s face, to learn what he was looking for earlier, but it was all in vain. His eyes were blank and hollow things, the mind behind them too preoccupied with survival to worry about anything else, even whatever drove him to risk his life before. Anne-Marie supposed it would be a long time before she knew what that was, though she couldn’t stop wondering.
The two hardly spoke in the days after their departure. What was there to say? The moments they shared in that cave were more intimate than mere words. Anne-Marie wondered if Black Bird remembered them at all in his state. For her own dignity, she hoped he didn’t (but for her heart’s sake, she hoped he did). Either way, he said nothing, and though a hundred questions burned in her, she kept them all inside. Now that he was well, she could afford to wait.
Now, they were free—at least, from the trials of the past. They had escaped the lands of the Five Nations, making it to the outskirts of the frontier claimed by New England. There, they had secured passage on a carriage bound for the town of Ipswich (Anne-Marie had thanked God for the prescience to hide her coin in the tumult with the Iroquois). The two shared a wooden bench that bumped every time the wheels underneath hit a rock (which was more often than either of them would have guessed). And while it was far less comfortable than their prior journey in the canoe, it was also far less dangerous. Neither complained. They were happy enough to be alive, and to be together.
Anne-Marie fumbled with her hands on her lap as Black Bird looked on to the horizon. With the worry of danger gone for now, awkwardness had filled its place. They had spoken little still, and the urge to say something rose in her with every passing moment. On the other hand, what was she supposed to say? What could she say? Every time she looked at him, the words died in her throat, and she became overwhelmed. He, too, seemed to avoid her gaze as much as he could, as if the two locking eyes would unearth some great and terrible secret. Perhaps it would. And perhaps, to Anne-Marie’s fear, it wouldn’t be so terrible.
“I’ve been thinking.”
The words surprised Anne-Marie. They weren’t hers. She turned to Black Bird, who continued to look out into the wilderness as the wooden wheels clacked and clattered on the uneven road.
“What about?” She asked.
“A number of things, really. I guess that isn’t that revelatory, is it? I’m always thinking about things. Maybe too often.”
Anne-Marie wrung her hands unsure of how to respond. She always struggled when he was blunt like this, when he cut through the mire to the truth of something. It was a clarity she was wholly unused to, growing up a noble. She found it both refreshing and disarming, and still hadn’t adapted to returning in kind.
“I think about the future most, I’ve found,” Black Bird continued. “What will happen tomorrow, a week, a year from now. But that’s a fool’s errand, isn’t it? It’s not what will happen, hardly ever. It’s all might’s and could’s and possibly’s. Hell, we both know how uncertain it is.”
“Oui,” Anne-Marie returned. “But it isn’t unnatural to think about those things, nor is it a mistake. A man who doesn’t think about tomorrow is a wanderer who only knows the immediate and the now. If you never prepare yourself for what will come, you’ll never be ready for it.”
“You’re saying I should worry about potential happenings, vague and nebulous as they are.”
“I’m saying there’s a happy medium, I think. Picture what might come, prepare yourself, but don’t dwell on it. Know and understand that the future is uncertain, but that uncertainty is not infinite or unknowable. It wasn’t unforeseeable that we’d be caught by Iroquois wandering through their lands.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Black Bird kept his gaze on the road ahead, saying nothing else. Curiosity burned in Anne-Marie, and nudged her forward. She scooted towards him on the bench.
“So what have you been thinking about?” She asked him.
“Well, I’ve—” Black Bird turned to face her as he started. Not realizing how close she was to him, his words caught in his throat when he met her eyes. On instinct, he backed away to the corner of the carriage, his face flushed, trying to regain his composure. It was Anne-Marie’s favorite look of his, she decided. She waited for him to keep talking, as patiently as her heart would let her.
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“Well, about the future,” he managed, staying vague. “I know where I’ll be going, what I’ll be doing. Trying to, at least. But what about you? What will you do?”
It was a good question. Anne-Marie had been so preoccupied with survival that she hadn’t even thought about what would become of her now.
“I’m not quite sure,” she replied honestly. “The only family I have is my brother, but I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, or if he even wants to see me. If he was living, he’s likely back somewhere in Iroquois territory, if anything. And while I care for him, I don’t think anything could force me back there after what we’ve been through.”
“Right… right. So I’ve been thinking.”
“So you’ve been thinking.”
Black Bird looked away again. His furtiveness caused her heart to race, for reasons that eluded her just the way his eyes did.
“I’ve been thinking about the future,” he repeated again. Evasiveness through repetition. For someone who was so often curt and honest, he was talking around something. It would be Anne-Marie’s turn, then, to cut to the truth of it. But how? She chose to listen first still, to bide her time.
“After I meet the man in Ipswich,” he told her, “I’ll head to the Harvard college in Cambridge, and ask them to admit me. It won’t be easy. They won’t want a man of my kind going to class with the white students, especially if I do well. It would shatter their misconceptions about their ‘superiority’. Yet I aim in part to do just that, all while they control the strings. I still haven’t quite figured out how it’ll even be possible.”
“And?”
“And, well… like you said, you don’t really have anywhere to go. In some ways, we’re the same in that regard. And I think, then, in that case… well, it might benefit us both to help each other.”
It was like coaxing a stray cat out of an alley—only in many ways, she was just as timid as he. Her heart pounded in her chest—she knew where he was going, and didn’t know whether to be terrified or excited or both. Still, she found that in the strangest way, he brought a tremendous boldness out of her, at least when it came to him. She scooted towards him on the bench.
“And?” She asked again.
“And, well… given your relative status, you know, in the French court, I figure that must carry some weight here, even with your enemies. It’s selfish, I know, but I was just thinking…”
“Yes?”
“Well… it would help my chances, I think, of being admitted. You know, if I was… married. To a woman of status.”
Just then, the carriage hit a particularly large rock on the road, and the force of it threw the two backward. He fell into her, and together they slid off the bench onto the hard wooden floor of the carriage. Dazed and confused, the two scrambled to gather themselves as the carriage came to a stop. The driver turned to check on them.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Everyone alright back there? I think the wheel’s—”
“Who do you think you are?!” Anne-Marie had been pushed to her absolute limit, and exploded on the poor man in the best and rudest English she could muster. “I paid good money for this trip, and here you are, steering like a baboon! Whoever taught you to drive horses should be flogged!”
“Sorry madam,” the man returned sheepishly, his face growing red. "I’ll get right on fixing the wheel.”
“And you,” Anne-Marie turned, pointing an angry finger at Black Bird as she returned to a tongue she was more comfortable with. “What the hell am I supposed to do with you? You can’t even look me in the eye, and you want me to be your wife?!”
Black Bird’s face went blank, and his mouth dropped open, dumbfounded. The wheels of his mind tried in vain to turn and muster some response.
Anne-Marie huffed angrily, and hopped off the carriage.
“Get down here,” she commanded, the fire in her heart taking complete hold of her. If Chrétien could see me now, she thought, just for a fleeting moment. He would hardly recognize me.
Black Bird obeyed, scrambling onto solid ground. She pointed down at the dusty road beneath them.
“On one knee, for God’s sake,” she said. “Propose to me like a man.”
“W-what?” Black Bird stammered.
“You want to marry me, don’t you? So act like it. Come and propose to me properly.”
Black Bird swallowed, gathering himself. Composed now, he took a knee on the ground and her hand in his, and he looked up at her. His dark eyes carried an infinite ocean in their depths, and that was all she wanted to see.
“Anne-Marie,” he began. “Please marry me. I… I want you to be my wife, and I want to be your husband. I don’t quite know if what I feel is love… but I feel a great fire in my heart whenever I look at you, whenever I think of you. It has burned in me night and day since I met you, and I want to know what it is. I want to learn what it is, if you’ll help me. I don’t have a ring—nor will I give you one. I promise you something better—my people, you see, we make belts. Hand-forged, bead by bead, shell by shell. Each one is a story of love and life and eternity, and you will know mine, if you’ll let me tell it.”
“Ours,” she corrected him. “Our story.”
Black Bird grinned, and his smile shone brighter than all the stars combined.
“Ours, then,” he said.
Anne-Marie smiled. Her composure finally left her—her whole body trembled from excitement and mirth. And love, of course—that new and alien thing, stranger to the both of them. And what a wonderful stranger it was. How lucky they were to begin to know it.
“I accept,” she told him, and she dragged the boy up to his feet, straight into a kiss. The two embraced, relishing in one another, in the moment. She took her face in his hands, and held him tight to her, and he did the same. Everything was released with that kiss—the fear of once and future, the pining and questions and wondering after the other’s intentions. They melted into one another, finally giving in to their wants and desires. When at last they finished, the two collapsed on the ground together, exhausted from holding in their love for so long. And at the end of it all, all they could do was laugh.
“See,” Anne-Marie giggled. “That wasn’t that hard, was it?”