“No, Michaela, with all due respect I really think I should be the one delivering this to Mr. Derby!”
She looked at Gale’s flushed face with her lucid bunny eyes and then without changing her facial expression pointed her finger at the long crowd of soldiers who were brawling over who gets to be the first to buy the Hulders Pharmacy’s “midnight leaf,” his famous pain killing remedy that can be brewed into tea or more commonly inhaled through a pipe. If Gale dared to close the pharmacy door at the face of these scarlet coated hot blooded mobsters, they might resort to violent expressions of their displeasure. Like burning their house down. Without even saying a word, she knows how to get an upper hand over him by getting her point across. As Gale stammered in disbelief, she continued in a matter-of-fact tone with her clear voice.
“I already handled deliveries before. Not much, but some. Don’t you trust me?”
“No, it’s not that! But our situation is more precarious.”
“Hey, you redhead and that mousey woman! I asked for a bushel of midnight and I have my cobs! Why is it taking so long, huh?”
Throwing both of their hands in exaggerated disbelief, the muscle brained officer’s comrades joined in this shouting contest of who complains louder. The people of Fullgreens were clucking their tongues at this spectacle, giving invisible signals to Gale that communicates “Please get this over with.” He groaned and mussed up his hair and by that time she already left.
By the time Michaela stepped out, the officers flung their vessel-shaped caps high in the air, hooting at her obscenities and making cat calls. They were not trying to be serious lechers, but what they called “merry making” was unsightly enough to make people frown and cluck. Her shoulders made a startled movement, but she only tugged on her bonnet to hide her face.
Gale looked at her hurrying form with something more than just deep concern, until the officer standing in front of him halted his train of thoughts.
“Pretty boy! I get that you care about your mail order bride, but I’ve been here for more than…”
“Here you go. Good day. Next!”
The officer went away with his treasured booty and Gale’s face lightened up considerably when a tall, black officer in a scarlet overcoat and flashing badges of honor approached the window.
“Captain Soussiere!”
“Gale, my man! It is good to be home!”
When the said captain, Abram Soussiere was making idle chit chat with Gale, the reckless mob of soldiers noticeably silenced their complaints to hurry the process. However, Soussiere acted as if this was nothing out of the unusual as he laughed and petted Gale on the shoulder. Allyah, Ivory, and Pipa, who live with Mr. Derby, were siblings to Abram Soussiere, captain of the second naval regiment of the King’s Army. Their original surnames were Saucer, but Abram changed his to a more French-sounding one to shed his “country bumpkin skin” and ally himself with the romantical notion of the “civilized Negro.” It seemed to be the only way to climb up the social ladder in the Empire with his skin color, proving himself superior in skill to his Western counterparts and appealing to the court’s fetish.
“But Gale, about the man who just left. Didn’t you give him the one with the lowest grade? Like the one that results in the most infernal kind of headaches and…”
“My dear captain, I assure you. This headache that you are talking about would be due to his night of carousing with all kinds of booze.”
At this, Abram blinked and Gale’s mysterious yellow hued dark eyes continued staring at him innocently. Abram than exclaimed “Ah!” as if hit by a sudden realization and than made a sneaky grin as he glanced back at the soldiers behind him.
“Of course. No man of my station would complain of some minor ailment. It would only serve to discredit anyone’s reputation as a man!”
At Abram’s not so subtle emphasis on the possessive word “my,” the soldiers understood that they were supposed to never condone any kind of harassment of their captain’s hometown friend.
“By the way, Gale, who is she who just left your store? If it wasn’t for my lifetime of traveling across the seas on bomb-ridden vessels, I wouldn’t have even known what she even is. She is obviously from the Asias, so how did…”
“Oh, about that, captain. I would like to ask you to keep an eye on my assistant. She just headed to your lovely sister’s and I am worried about the troops heckling her.”
“What, my sister? Who dares to heckle my sister! On my good name, I will skin him and his comrades alive and have our youngest Pipa play hanky sack with their remains.”
“No, I meant, Michaela.”
“Ah, in that case, no need to worry. I was just going to give you my greetings. I am to leave Fullgreens this evening because of unattended business, so make sure you stop by.”
“Yes, indeed. Before you leave, please accept this…”
As Gale turned away to give Abram some high quality hemp and his well known blossom tea for his family, he and everyone nearby the pharmacy heard a loud ruckus on the soldiers strewn cobble stone path.
Gale turned his head, thinking that someone started to take rum too early, but he saw a scene that he couldn’t imagine witnessing.
Abram tipped his ostrich feather strewn cap and made a short, melodious whistle.
“Michaela?”
To a gawking Gale, Abram chuckled.
“My dear Hulder, it seems that your almond eyed mistress doesn’t require her knight in shining hemp after all.”
***
Michaela was coming back from delivering the goods to Mr. Derby, a sullen woodsman known for living with the famous black midwife Allyah and her two younger sisters Ivory and Pipa. All kinds of rumors surrounded the exact circumstance as to why these three women live with a aging bachelor like Derby, but they themselves didn’t seem to care. They lived in a part of the Fullgreens town that was unofficially demarcated as the part where former slaves or colored indentured servants lived. Allyah, a middle aged, stately woman, was as warm as ever to Michaela, and Pipa, the youngest of all, a five years old, was sweet too, always asking Michaela if she brought Theodore. It seemed that only Ivory, the twenty two year old girl who refused to braid her hair or wear a bonnet, didn’t allow herself to warm up to her and often gave Michaela a haughty stare without even a cordial greeting.
So Michaela was coming back with a basketful of home grown lettuce that Allyah offered and she greedily accepted. As she was walking, she was fingering the silky texture of the leafy greens in her straw basket, her eyes sparkling with anticipation as Allyah’s beautiful vegetables always seem to be miraculously free of bugs like maggots. Because she was busy staring down at her treasure, thinking about Theodore’s “happy twister-dance,” yes, rabbits leap and twist their bodies when they’re happy, she didn’t see a middling statured huntsman standing right in her way. As she took in the shadow cast over her, she raised her head.
“Why, why in such a hurry, my little doll?”
Sunlight was falling upon the huntsman’s bare brow, showing him to have long, tied back dark hair and a high forehead and an unusually sharp-tipped nose that reminded Michaela of an eagle. He was wearing a garb consisting of patches of different shades of brown, and a large pistol strapped across his body with a leather belt and a small dagger hitched to his waist. His large brimmed felt hat cast a shadow over his deeply set light blue eyes, looking down at Michaela’s eyes under her bonnet. Michaela glanced at the large gun and than to a handkerchief tied to his collar, embroidered with a small, interesting decoration of lilies and lions on a shield she saw in an ironsmith.
“I called for you for a while now, but you seemed so absorbed by your bounty there.”
Michaela simply stared back, neither looking surprised or confused. The huntsman took her silence as a welcoming gesture, and he excitedly continued, touching his stubbled chin.
You see, my porcelain, I got a big wound here near my chest. I saw you coming back from the Derbys and I know you work in Hulders, so obviously you must have some knowledge with injuries.”
“…”
“Uh, hum. You see here, my dear, the Derby woman and the Saucer girls are not really my type. Those aggressive bucks are too much. I prefer submissive ones like you.”
“…They are not bucks.”
“Hahaha, my little mouse, you do talk! How charming!”
“I’m not a mouse. I’m a rabbit.”
“Hahaha! Don’t say that aloud to anyone else, you coquette!”
“…”
Now the huntsman thought that they did enough talking so he decided to make progress. He leaned dangerously close to Michaela, his forehead close to touching hers. He heard somewhere of a distant island where mysterious beauties clad in nothing but silk would tend warriors’ wounds, and he has always taken quite a fancy to that. Seeing her alone just seemed to be a perfect opportunity to test that story’s cultural accuracy. Her impassive, lipid eyes started widening, and the huntsman smirked, drawing sadistic pleasure by what he perceived as her “artful surprise.”
“Now, my dear, would you heal me?”
At this, everything became clear to Michaela. This stranger was communicating not just the basics of rabbit language, but the language of the savage cycle of nature. His “head butting” was a clear challenge to a “fight till death.”When a rabbit nudges another on the forehead, they know what’s up. Michaela, a proud single mother but a bunny not so blessed by evolution, was going to show this man exactly how she survived the wilderness. And the man’s demand that she ‘heals’ him of an illness even the wildest beast is not safe from, called ‘hunger,’ to satiate his base desires–nothing can be more transparent.
In a blink of an eye, Michaela was straddling him, pummeling at her victim with her fist while she pins him to the ground by his collar, her prized possessions rolling nearby. Dust was flying around as her victim cried for mercy and bloody Mary.
The soldiers who were smoking their pipes and playing dice threw out their boards and rushed to the scene, whistling and yelling words like “Encore,” and “Fight.” She was finally restrained and taken inside the pharmacy by Gale, and a tall, black royal officer whom the men called “Captain” ushered the huntsman and shooed the throngs away.
By the time she was finally pulled away by Gale, her face was flushed and her impressive dark eyes were bright with exercise and an emotion that he couldn’t identify as anything else than “pride.” Gale lectured her about not attracting the soldiers’ attention and getting possibly hurt while wiping the dirt and grime and sweat off her face with a wet linen towel, but she showed little remorse. Fighting to smother his laughter, Gale tucked away a strand of hair that stuck to her forehead, finishing his lengthy lecture with the magic words “please think of Theodore.”
***
Soon the King’s Army summoned all of the Fullgreens villagers, including women and children, to gather in the main street to pay respect to the royal infantry. Gale wore a large cape that made him look like Ganymede, the Grecian shepherd in Classic paintings in court, and Michaela had Theodore tucked in a straw basket she cushioned with some hemp cloth and quilts. Already most of the villagers gathered to see this long line of red coat clad soldiers with glinting pistols strapped across their bodies. Behind this infantry stood a group of more slovenly dressed warriors carrying fur hides and a sack written ” Injian scalps.”
Michaela slightly tugged onto Gale’s sleeve and asked
“Who are they? Why are they differently dressed?”
He made a grimace and explained without taking his eyes away from the parade. He stood back a little.
“They are merceneries that leech on the royal army. The officers deny it but every Virginian knows that they act as undercover spies. Because they were originally vagrant hunters, they are not as disciplined as the British they work with.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“Very. Here.”
Gale suddenly turned away from the parade and faced Michaela, tying her bonnet in a way that further covers her face.
“I always forget how much you stand out from the crowd. Try to not get close to them. If things get dangerous, just hide under my cape.”
Michaela nodded and Gale made a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
Hulder Tales 