“This isn’t happening!” I ran over to help move the woman. We flipped her over and discovered she had been laying on top of a blood-soaked blanket. If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn it was an infant’s blanket. “What's your name? Who did this to you? Where is the baby?” There wasn't much time left for the woman and I needed to know who to blame and who to help. I closed my eyes and hoped that it wasn’t Jumonville and his men. I thought they might have come across this couple on their way to look for me. If they were willing to do this to this couple, I knew my days were numbered.
“Janet,” the woman said with an accent I believed to be Scottish. Her dark hair plastered to her scalp with blood. “Savages.” Janet whispered. Her pale lips barely moved. “Tamhas.”
“Tamhas? Is that your husband?” I looked at Henry with a confused look on my face. Henry shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. I grabbed Janet's hand.
“Bairn, Tamhas…” Janet’s voice trailed off. She could hardly breathe, let alone speak.
“Your baby will be fine. We will care for it. You need to rest so you can get better.” I stifled my emotions.
“Aye,” said Janet, her voice faded as she closed her eyes. Her head slumped over, and she fell silent and still. I placed her fingers on Janet's neck, desperate to find the pulse. I knew I would not find. No pulse.
“Henry, she said savages killed them. There is no baby here.” I searched around the room. “What happened to it?”
“I don't believe it. I can't believe it. This is Mingo land, Tanaghrisson,” He looked at me to confirm that I remembered the name. I did. “He would not have this family killed.”
My ears burned hot with the anger of a thousand suns all going supernova at the same time and space. “I don't think a dying woman would lie about who killed her. If the Mingo or Tanaghrisson didn't kill them, who did?”
Henry stood next to me and looked down at the bloody mess. “The French have the Shawnee in the area fighting for them. It could have been them.”
“What can we do?” I reached down and held Janet’s lifeless hand.
“We do nothing besides bury them, like you had requested. I would leave them where they lay, and we could move on.” He sounded defeated and annoyed at my request to bury the couple.
He knew that would be a losing argument with me. I couldn’t leave this couple laying here in a pool of their own blood. I broke free from the hold I had on Janet’s hand and stood next to Henry. “If she was alive… whoever did this to them… well, they can’t be very far away. They could come back here, and we could have the same fate as them.” I looked back down at the couple. “I suppose we need to find a place to bury them after it stops raining. Should we go to the barn? Should we move them outside? Should I go look for the baby? I can't sit here and stare at them.”
“We could leave them here. Remain on the porch. I found a shovel in the barn. I don’t want you wandering off into the woods alone, looking for a baby that is not there.”
“Do you think whoever did this took the baby with them?” I no longer held my breath. As terrible as the smell of blood and body fluids was in there, my senses began to dull to the stench.
Henry walked across the room and looked out the small back window. “Mayhap they did. I haven’t seen or heard a baby since we arrived. Have you?”
“No.” I sucked my bottom lip. I had listened for the men that could have done this, not a baby’s cry. We walked outside. The smell of rain tumbled through the trees and refreshed my senses. I closed my eyes and drew in a lungful of clean air.
Henry stripped off his jacket and waistcoat and startled me when he shoved them in hands. I stood on the porch out of the rain, listening for a baby’s cry. He went to the side of the house and started digging a large hole with the shovel he found in the barn. I focused my ears on the surrounding sounds. I heard the raindrops slap the leaves. Thwap. Thwap. No baby.
I watched him and kept an eye out on the surrounding woods. I didn’t know what else to do. I felt silly about not being able to be in the room alone with them. After taking a deep breath, I headed inside to clean the scene. I found a bucket and cloths. Stripped out of my gown and petticoats, bum roll, and pockets. I left my stays and shift as my only clothing. My clothes and hat were placed on the small table near the kitchen area. I tied a piece of found rope around my waist and made into a belt. I pulled the front bottom of my shift through my legs and tucked it into the back waist, using the belt. The makeshift shorts gave me the ability to clean without the extra fabric getting in the way and kept my outer clothes free from the deceased’s bodily fluids that had pooled in a sticky puddle.
I went outside to the porch and shouted to Henry, who had dug down about two feet, “I will need buckets of water. Where did these people get their water from?”
“A well out back.” He grunted as he shoveled the dirt. He stopped digging. “I can fill it for you.”
“You’re digging. You don't want me to search for the baby, but I need to do something productive. I will let you know if I need any help.” I waved him off and went to the back of the house to look for the well.
Henry stood in awed silence as he watched me round the back of the house. I was barefoot and my shift became transparent in the rain. If I had not been wearing stays, my breasts would have been on display. The bucket full of water splashed back and forth as I struggled to carry it. I made a mental note to go back to the gym when I get back to the future.
“Amelia, what are you wearing?” Henry gave me a disapproving look. “What I mean to say, why are you indecently dressed?”
“Why do you give two shakes of a lamb’s tail at what I’m wearing?” I sat the bucket down and pressed my hands firmly on my hips. “If we are going to stay the night here, I would prefer to clean up as much of the mess as I can. I’m not getting down on my hands and knees scrubbing in that dress. I swear, I don't know how the women did it.”
“Pardon?” He did that raised one eyebrow thing. How do people do that? “What do you mean you don't know how women did it? You are a woman.”
“Yes. I am a woman with work to do and the longer you stand here questioning my choice of work clothes, the wetter and colder I am getting by standing out here in the rain. So, if you don't mind.” Grabbing the bucket, I turned on my heel and headed inside. Of all the things that we had going on, he was concerned with what I was or was not wearing in the middle of the woods, in a cabin that contained people that were murdered.
I cleaned the bodies as best as I could. Wet the cloth, wipe them down, rinse, and repeat. I threw the bloody water out the door, retrieved clean water, and repeat the process. I wiped up the floor around the bodies the best I could. We had to move them outside and bury them before I could finish. I was on my hands and knees, wiping up what I could, and sat back to take a breath. Henry walked in and stood a moment in the doorway. “We can bury them now if you'd like.”
“Yeah. Good idea. I'm tired and I can't rest until I know they are at rest.” My heart ached for the Janet, her husband, and their missing baby. Who could do such a thing to these people? It was beyond my comprehension.
Henry put his hands under the man's arms to drag him outside. I ran over and grabbed the feet. “We do this together.” I struggled to carry the weight of the man. We took Janet and laid her next to her husband in the grave. They almost looked like they were sleeping. Peaceful. Henry tossed the dirt over them. “What if we find the baby?” I asked, mindlessly watching the dirt cover the bodies.
He didn’t look up from his task. “We will be concerned about that if that happens.” He continued shoveling dirt into the grave.
I wasn’t satisfied with his answer, but he was correct. There was no sense in worrying about burying a child that we may or may not find. “I'm going to finish cleaning while you do that. Unless you need me here.”
“I would like you to stay here with me, and them,” he said with a flick of his head towards the couple. “Until they are properly buried. It was your idea to bury them.” More dirt in the grave. Even with the rain, I could see the sweat pouring out of him. Every muscle in his body flexed with the weight of the wet dirt. “When I’m done, you can go back to cleaning, and I will check in on Louis.” I hadn't expected him to want me to stay. He was more sensitive to their death than I gave him credit. The couple in their grave with dirt being thrown on top of them made me realize they were, in fact, dead and not just sleeping. The weight of reality hit me hard. This would be their ultimate resting place, and no one would know. No family would come and visit them. I wondered if I could find my way back here when I returned to my own time. Would someone find the bodies in two hundred years? Would they build a shopping mall or parking lot here? They would be lost in time, and no one would ever know what happened to them, except for me and Henry.
Henry tossed the last bit of dirt and covered the mounds with the rocks that he had dug up and others he had found nearby. I stood there, soaked and shivering, with my arms crossed, trying to keep in what little heat I had left in my body. I stayed throughout the time it took to finish burying them in their grave, even if I felt like I would never get warm again. It is strange how many times I had been cold and wet in 1754.
Henry placed the last rock and put his arm around my shoulder. “Thank you for staying out here with me. Why don't you finish up inside while I take care of Louis?” His voice was deep and comforting.
I nodded. My teeth chattered so hard I could not speak, only nod.
Henry walked into the cabin, having finished stabling and feeding Louis to find the blood cleaned up off the floor. He looked over at me soaked with blood, sweat, and rain, and he put a couple of logs on the fire. I focused my mind on cleaning, that I had not noticed how much I was shivering with cold from the fire becoming nothing more than a smolder.
“Let me do that.” He took the rag and bucket from me and set them on the porch. “You are nearly frozen. You should get out of those wet clothes.”
“I... I... I... can't get the stays off... fffff.. off.” My teeth chattered to the point I could only stutter. I turned around with my back was towards him, “Ties in ba... a... ack.”
He loosened the stays, his own hands trembled from the cold rain. He got in front of me and untied the rope I had used as a belt. “I'm going to get clean water in the bucket. The fire should start picking up soon. Stay close to it.”
I nodded and peeled off my wet clothes when Henry left the room. I pulled a blanket that was on the bed, wrapped it around me, and stood with my hands outstretched towards the fire. I would have liked to run a hot bath, but in the middle of the woods and in an unwelcoming time, I would not find a bathtub or hot running water.
“I'm going to fill the kettle and pot with water. I'll be back with more water to rinse out our clothes.” Henry’s voice carried over my chattering teeth. When I realized I was not alone, I closed the blanket. My exposed flesh to the fire felt good, but I did not need Henry to see me in this state of undress. He had called me indecent when I had my shift and stays on to work. I might have given him a heart attack if he had seen me naked. That type of reaction would have done nothing for my ego.
“Thank you,” I stuttered through chattered teeth.
He came back and searched through the cabinets, bringing over day old bread and butter. “They must have more food in this house.”
“Whoever killed them might have taken it,” I said as I gnawed on a chunk of the buttered bread.
Henry grabbed my shift—that I had thrown over a chair by the fire — and rinsed it out in the bucket. He dipped and squeezed it. He rubbed the cloth together, trying to get out one of the bigger spots of blood. He pulled off his shirt and repeated the process. He went out and grabbed a fresh bucket of water gave them a good rinse and hung the clothes by the fire. He grabbed a blanket off the bed, wrapped himself in it, and pulled off his trousers, socks and boots and hung them next to the fire to dry.
Henry sat down on the floor next to me and held his hands out to warm them. He knew his plans of moving on were changed and we would have to stay the night. We hoped the person or people that had killed Janet and her husband would not return before we left.