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“Is your family still living?”
     
    Adahya nodded.  It was dark now, and the firelight painted eerie shadows onto the surrounding birch and maple trees.  “My mother lives.  My father was killed in the war against the French.  I have two brothers.”
     
    “Are you the oldest?”
     
    He shook his head.  Zachariah and Two Guns would probably be back from the Onondaga council by now.  “I am the youngest,” he answered.
     
    “I would have thought you were the oldest.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  You look old, I guess.”
     
    He suddenly became annoyed again.  “I am twenty-seven winters.  That is not so old.”
     
    “Are you married?”
     
    Her boldness shocked him.  Never would a Hodenosaunee woman have inquired so personal a question of a man whom she barely knew.  He had been forward with his questions to her, but he was a man.  Boldness in a woman was completely unacceptable.  “We do not wed in white chapels with steeples like Knox would do.”  His tone was purposely sarcastic.
     
    “What about your version of marriage then?”
     
    “And I suppose our version would disgust you, Onondio?”  His annoyance was growing.  The white eyes must certainly find her as rude as he did.
     
    “I didn’t say that.  I just asked if you had a wife.  It was a simple question.”
     
    “I have no wife.”  He did not know why he had told her.  He supposed mainly to end her meddling.
     
    “Why not?”
     
    The brass this woman had!  He glared across the fire at her.  She was looking at him as if she had every right to ask such personal questions.  Adahya studied her face in the firelight, his annoyance turning fast to anger.  Two could play her game.
     
    “Why is it, Onondio, that if Knox is not your husband as you claim, your father allowed you to come all the way out here alone and not provided for?”
     
    “Joshua provides for me.”
     
    “By leaving you alone while he goes to Albany?”
     
    She did not answer, and Adahya smiled, knowing he had won.  He watched her toy with a twig near the fire.  At last she replied, “I came here to teach.”
     
    “The Oneidas?”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    He grunted.
     
    * * *
     
    KATHERINE glared at the Indian.  She had lied, but there was no other way to explain her reason for coming here.  Winning Joshua’s love was her motive for everything she did, it seemed.  She had followed Joshua around like a puppy ever since he had been assigned to her father’s parish.  She had begged and pleaded to come here with him.  Papa had been against it, but she had insisted that Joshua held feelings for her, and her father believed Joshua would eventually marry her.  That, too, had been a lie.
     
    His glare was skeptical.  “What kind of father allows his husbandless daughter to live with three men?  That is not honorable.”
     
    “And what, pray tell, do you know about honor?”  She clenched her teeth, infuriated by his superior attitude.
     
    “A Hodenosaunee man takes care of his women.  He does not allow them to fight their battles for him.  He especially does not allow them to be escorted to enemy forts by men they do not even know.”
     
    “How dare you judge me!”
     
    “I am asking questions as you have asked me all day,” he answered matter-of-factly.  He seemed unaffected by her anger.
     
    “Well, I don’t appreciate it.”  She turned her back to him and looked up at the starry sky.  The moon was huge between the tree branches, and she wondered if Joshua was watching it too.  They had always watched the night sky together.  Joshua said he could feel God’s presence at night, that the stars were His windows to heaven.
     
    It had been five days since Joshua had told her he did not love her, that he could never love her.  The memory of his words still stung as though he had said them only moments ago.
     
    She silently prayed that his trip to Albany would bring him prosperity and a