Chapter 10 #3
The boatmen shifted their poles, guiding the heavy craft toward the shore. The transition from the movement of the river to the stillness of the land was always a strange one. As the bow touched the bank, a flock of birds erupted from the trees, a sudden burst of white against the darkening sky.
Elizabeth stood at the rail, her face lit by the last of the sun.
She looked out at the wilderness with an expression of pure, unadulterated interest. She was not afraid.
She was not hesitant. She was exactly the kind of woman who belonged in such a place, and in that moment, Darcy realized with a pang of something like despair that he would follow her anywhere.
The camp was a small affair. Fires were lit, blankets were spread, and the first meal on the trail was prepared. There was little conversation. The exhaustion of the day and the severity of the country seemed to press down on them all. Even Wickham was quiet, sitting apart, sharpening his knife.
Darcy walked to the edge of the camp, looking back at the river.
The water was a dark ribbon now, reflecting the first of the stars.
He thought of the date again. June. The month of the summer solstice, the month of the longest days.
He wondered what the world would look like by the time the days began to shorten.
In the distance, a wolf howled, a long, mournful sound that echoed through the trees. It was answered by another, and then there was only the crackle of the fire and the lap of the river against the boat.
They were alone in the great expanse of the continent.
Elizabeth approached him, a cup of tea in her hand. She offered it to him without a word. He took it, the warmth of the ceramic a comfort in the cooling air.
"To the journey," she murmured.
"To the journey," Darcy replied.
They stood together in the darkness, two figures on the edge of a vast and unknown future.
Behind them, the fire burned bright, a small circle of light in a world that was rapidly turning to shadow.
They did not know what the coming weeks would bring.
They did not know of the war that was already being weighed in the balance.
They only knew that for the first time, they were moving in the same direction.
The Heron's Wing lay silent against the bank, a sliver of wood and iron against the might of the Mississippi. It was a fragile vessel for such a weight of hope and history, yet as the stars grew brighter, it seemed enough.
Darcy took a sip of the tea. It was bitter and strong, but it cleared his head. He looked at Elizabeth, her silhouette sharp against the firelight.
"We have a long way to go, Miss Bennet."
"Yes," she said. "But we have already made the most difficult step."
"And what is that?"
"We have left the shore," she said.
She turned and walked back to the fire, leaving Darcy alone with the river and the night.
He watched her go, and for the first time in many months, he felt a flicker of something that was not duty or fear.
It was hope, as fragile as the boat and as deep as the river, and it was enough to see him through the first night of the long journey north.
The war would come. The world would burn. But as the third of June faded into the fourth, the expedition moved on, oblivious to the storm that was gathering on the horizon, driven by a current that no man could hope to control.
The journey had begun.
On the second morning, before the sun had fully cleared the tree line, Elizabeth found her father seated on a crate near the stern of the keelboat, his hat tilted against the light and a book open on his knee.
He was not reading. He was watching the river with the quiet attention of a man cataloguing a new species.
"You are very still, Papa," she said, sitting beside him on the rough planking.
"I am practising the art of doing nothing with great conviction. The river seems to appreciate the effort."
"Are you sorry we came?"
Mr. Bennet closed his book slowly. "I am never sorry to be where you are, Lizzy. I am occasionally sorry to be where mosquitoes are, but that is a separate grievance." He paused. "You are worried."
"I am always worried. It is my chief occupation."
"Yes, you inherited that from your mother, along with her conviction that worry accomplishes something useful. It does not. But I see in you a quality she lacks—you worry and then you act. It is a formidable combination."
Elizabeth leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment. The river slid past, brown and unhurried, carrying leaves and branches from places neither of them had seen. The keelboat creaked in its timbers, and somewhere forward, a voyageur was singing in a low, tuneless baritone.
"Papa?"
"Hm?"
"If something should happen—"
"Nothing will happen that we cannot manage, my dear. I have my books, you have your wits, and Mr. Darcy has his maps. Between the three of us, we possess everything necessary to confuse the wilderness into submission."
She smiled, though it did not quite reach her eyes. He noticed, and for once did not deflect with irony.
"Elizabeth." His voice was gentler than she was accustomed to hearing it. "I am proud of you. I do not say it often enough, because saying things often enough has never been my particular talent. But I am."
She pressed his hand and said nothing. Some things were better left to the silence between two people who understood each other well enough to spare the words.
The river carried them on.