Fire Along the Sky (25 page)

But this was something rarer, this quiet white anger that pinned her down and gagged her. What end it would take, even Nathaniel couldn't predict. He watched her from his spot near the hearth while he cleaned his rifle and then sharpened his knives, poured lead into bullet molds, refilled his powder horn. These were things he had done every day of his life, the movements as natural to him as breathing, and he could do them in a quiet cabin or with a battle raging around his ears. What he couldn't do, what he couldn't imagine, was what she might say when the power of speech came back to her.

It wasn't until they had banked the fire and gone to bed that the last of his patience was spent. Lying next to Elizabeth in their marriage bed, he studied the back of her head for a while and then he said the first thing that came to mind.

“You could go put a bullet in the man, Boots. It wouldn't do him any harm and it might make you feel better.”

A tremor ran through her and then another and another, a tide that she was determined to hold back. And still it took her as easily as a dog took a rabbit, shook her playfully until she was limp and couldn't protect herself or run. Nathaniel let her weep, one hand on her shoulder, and tried to remember the last time he had seen her like this.

It took him back a long way, to the summer they were first married. Trouble with Todd had driven them into the endless forests, the summer she had fought for his life and her own, fought Richard and Jack Lingo, that old devil, fought the bush and the weather and terror and her own weakness. She had faced all of that down and the strain of it had carved a hollow in her.

Nathaniel thought of those days, oddly as clear and bright in his mind as the things he had done this very morning, and then found out she had followed him back through the years to the very same place.

“I should have done it back then,” she said. “I should have killed him in the bush and left him to rot. Think of all the heartache it would have saved.”

The weeping came over her again, harsh as a scouring snow. When the worst of it was over he pressed himself up against her back, draped his arm around her shoulder. He cradled her against him and stroked her hair until she slept.

He slept too, and woke in the dead of night to find her sitting, her arms looped around her knees and her hair flowing around her shoulders like some witchy woman from one of Jennet's stories.

She said, “I won't let Ethan go away. He is my only brother's boy, and he should be here near us, where we can keep an eye on him.”

There were things he could say, rational things that she would not try to deny in the light of day: that Ethan was a man grown, with a mind and will of his own. That this day had been coming for a long time and they had all known it, even if they never spoke of it.

The truth was, Ethan wanted to leave Paradise and had not known how to do that. Richard had only given his stepson what he could not bring himself to ask for. Ethan would go off to study at some college in New-York City or Boston or Philadelphia, and in two years' time, if Richard had his way, he wouldn't remember why he had ever hesitated to leave Paradise, or why he might want to come back.

Nathaniel could say all those things that Elizabeth knew anyway, or he could leave it all and say something even truer: this had less to do with Ethan moving away than it did with their own Daniel, gone now for more weeks than either of them wanted to count, and no word for the last month.

It was something they lived with minute by minute, each of them, and did not discuss: what it might mean, if the worst had come to pass.

In the faint light from the window he saw her expression harden, as if he had spoken those words, and more.

“Damn you, Nathaniel Bonner.” Her voice trembled, close to breaking. “Damn you, you're going to let Richard win. You'll see Ethan off and build the schoolhouse and let your daughter take over his practice. You're giving Richard Todd everything he ever wanted.” Her eyes flashed at him, tear-filled and furious.

He had been holding his anger tight and small and close to him, but now it began to run like sand from a clenched fist. He swallowed hard and met her eye, saw the challenge there.

“He never got you, did he? He never got you or Hannah, and by God, Boots, what the hell do I care for the rest of it, so long as I kept hold of what matters most?”

She trembled and then broke like a branch in a high wind, falling toward him, back bowed, and he caught her as he always had and always would as long as he lived. He caught her up against him and rocked her, whispered soft things against her hair and touched her gently, his fingers tracing her jaw and the line of her lip and the widow's peak that carved her face into a heart.

“He'll come home in the end,” Nathaniel said. “He will come home safe.”

That was what she needed to hear and so he gave it to her, against his better judgment. She did not press him for names, for times and days, as she would have done as a younger woman. She was satisfied, right now, with
in the end
.

In thanks and need she pressed against him until they began to move together with subtle, quick, knowing touches, the old questions so often asked and answered. Finally she was naked in his arms, her pale skin soaking up the little bit of moonlight until it glowed, her breath rising damp and harsh in the cold room.

He felt her thinking mind pushing its way up, trying to intrude itself between them. She made a sound, a
wait
sound, but he held her close and closer, held her down and kissed her until she gave up, gave in, dropped all the worries long enough to admit again what Nathaniel could never let her forget: that she belonged here with him and nowhere else, that no matter what trouble came to them they would face it together.

In the morning Elizabeth woke to the sound of a long “halloo” echoing off the cliff walls; Nathaniel's side of the bed was empty, and Gabriel stood at the door, his cheeks red with the cold, snow in his hair: her beautiful boy. She held out her arms and he ran to her, bounced on the bed like the child he was, pushed his face into her neck and hugged her. A boy as rough as a bear cub and just as irresistible and dangerous too. She said a silent thanks that he was too young for this newest war.

“Who's come to call this early?” she asked him, running her fingers through his hair and thinking vaguely of her brushes on the dresser; he would be gone before she could reach for them.

“Bump.” The boy bounced away from her and off the bed, landing on his feet like a cat. “And he's brought the post, Mama. The rider came in late last night.”

“Is there a letter from your brother? From Daniel?”

“Maybe.” Gabriel grinned as if the idea had not occurred to him; as if he did not know how worried she had been. “Come and see.” And he ran away, shutting the door behind himself.

She could go out just as she was, in her nightclothes, but she forced herself to dress, slowly, methodically, carefully, listening as she did to the men's voices from the other room. Runs-from-Bears said something and Bump laughed, a high, hopping laugh that would make his oversized head wobble on a spindly neck. Nathaniel had gone silent and when Elizabeth opened the door she understood why: he sat by the hearth, bent over an open letter, reading.

Then he looked up at her and smiled. “All's well, Boots. Both the boys safe and sound and in good spirits.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Mr. Bump,” she said, “how kind of you to bring the post. I will make tea, shall I?”

In the end she sent Gabriel down to the village to tell all her students that school was canceled for the day. Not so much because of the letter, though Elizabeth would gladly have read it again and again, but because of the other news that Bump brought. He was on his way to Canada to fulfill the last request Richard Todd had made of him.

Nathaniel and Runs-from-Bears exchanged glances at this revelation.

“It's been a while since I heard any word of Throws-Far,” said Runs-from-Bears. “But then he was making winter camp on the lakes.” He volunteered this information before Bump could ask, and Nathaniel carried on in the same way.

“You should talk to our Hannah, she would know more.”

“I did just that, and she gave me a name,” Bump said. “Somebody to talk to, an old Mohawk woman near Montreal. Since I'm headed that way, I thought I might as well call on Lily. Curiosity is already busy putting together a parcel. Is there anything you'd like me to take your daughter, Mrs. Bonner?”

“Now you've done it,” Nathaniel said, grinning. “These women will load you down like a draft horse.”

Later, Annie came to find Elizabeth while she packed things into baskets: more socks, a woolen underskirt, a beautiful pair of winter moccasins that Many-Doves had worked on for a month, a package of dates and another of dried apricots, a jug of the last of the maple syrup, a bundle of newspapers and magazines, a small pile of books.

The little girl watched and helped where she could, and it was some while before Elizabeth noted the expression on her face.

“What is it?” she asked. “Come, talk to me while I work.”

Annie cast a sidelong glance in her aunt's direction. “It's about Jemima Kuick,” Annie said.

“She is Mrs. Wilde, now,” Elizabeth reminded her.

“Mrs. Wilde,” the girl echoed, and there was a long wait while she gathered her thoughts.

“What about her?”

“People say that when Baldy O'Brien comes—” Annie paused.

“Judge O'Brien,” Elizabeth said quietly. “Or Mr. O'Brien.”

“Mr. O'Brien,” Annie echoed again, and then said nothing more. Instead her teeth worked the soft flesh of her lower lip.

Elizabeth closed the lid of the basket and made firm knots in the rawhide strings meant to hold it shut. She studied Annie while she did this, and saw that the girl's worry went deep.

“Start at the beginning,” she said. “What people, and what do they say?”

Nathaniel had come to the door and stood listening, his arms folded. Annie glanced at her favorite uncle and lost her train of thought; a scattered child, at times, but a bright one.

She said, “Jem Ratz says we will all have to watch when they hang Nicholas and Jemima. It's the law that everybody watches. Is it true? Will we all go down to see them hang?”

Elizabeth sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and drew the little girl closer to her. She said, “Jem Ratz may be a dab hand with a slingshot, but I despair of ever putting the empty space between his ears to good use. No, it is not true.”

“Boots—” Nathaniel began, and she cut him off with an upraised hand.

“If anyone should be condemned to hang—and I do not see that anyone will, if the rule of law is followed—no one will be compelled to watch. In fact, you will not be
allowed
to watch. No child will, if I have my way.”

“Not even Martha and Callie?” Annie asked, in a surer voice.

Elizabeth blanched visibly, and then the color rushed back into her face in uneven blotches. “Most especially not. Neither Martha nor Callie,” she said. “I will have a talk with Jem Ratz and make the matter clear to him too.”

Nathaniel said, “Woe unto Jem Ratz.”

“The very idea,” Elizabeth said. “I can hardly imagine what silliness people will begin with next.”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” said Annie, completely at ease now. “They're saying that Jemima is a witch and that if they don't hang her they should burn her. And,” she hurried on, eager to tell all of it, “they say that Jemima spins all day, tow enough for a thousand candlewicks, but that nobody will buy any from her for she weaves a spell in with every twist of the spindle, a curse on all of us in Paradise.”

And with that she turned and skipped away, a child who had unburdened herself to those she loved and trusted.

With considerable disquiet of his own Nathaniel saw Elizabeth's expression and recognized it too well. His wife gearing up for yet another battle. One he feared she could not win, not if she took it into her head to protect Jemima Wilde from the entire village of Paradise.

Chapter 17

January 1813, Montreal

Luke was gone to Québec on business, and the house on the rue Bonsecours had grown larger without him in it. Lily thought it would be good to be free of her brother for a little while, but before two days had passed she missed him, despite his moods or maybe, she realized, because of them. Luke gave her something to think about that wasn't Nicholas Wilde, and the letter that would not come.

The noisy dinners around a crowded table had stopped when Luke left, and Lily was at first surprised and then hurt and then a little embarrassed to realize that the company who had joined them was less dependent on her than she had imagined. It was odd to eat alone at the big table with Iona, who did not need to fill the emptiness with talk. It was not that she was unsympathetic to Lily's loneliness, she realized, but that Iona was not one to talk unless she had something to say. Much like Lily's Kahnyen'kehàka cousins, but here in Montreal it did not suit.

And she suspected that Iona would have even less patience with Lily's confused heart than Lily had for herself. It all sounded too silly to her own ears. The Catholics, she learned from Ghislaine, believed that a person could be possessed by the devil or an evil spirit, a belief the church of Rome had in common with the Kahnyen'kehàka. To be possessed by the idea of a living man was not much different, and Lily thought sometimes of finding a priest to ask about how to be free of her thoughts.

She thought of going home, but how would she explain herself?
I have studied enough,
she might say.
I was homesick
. Her mother would look at her face and know the truth. Lily wished she could sleep through the rest of the winter like a bear.

Ghislaine, keen and clever enough to guess at least part of the problem, suggested that Lily go visit a black woman from the Sugar Islands who lived on the outskirts of the city. This woman could give her potions to make her forget about Nicholas Wilde and Simon Ballentyne both.

Lily had sent Simon away, and he had gone. Without the strong words she expected. Without argument. Another thing to wonder about, what it might mean; why it was such an irritation to her to have him do what she asked him to do. Contrary creature that she was, Lily missed him, or perhaps, she admitted to herself, the things Simon had given her: sleigh rides and snow picnics and outings with people her own age.

And kisses. She had liked kissing him, liked it so much that she felt guilty later, thinking about it. It was best that he was gone, and if she needed someone to talk to, there were her teachers, and Ghislaine, and the old lady in the bakery who was always glad to see her. And there was her work, which was distraction enough, in the daylight.

At night she thought of Nicholas Wilde and Simon Ballentyne and suffered sharp dreams that woke her to find that she had sweated through her nightclothes.

On a Saturday when Luke had been gone for a week and would be gone for another, Lily and Iona sat down to another solitary dinner just as someone knocked at the door. The gust of cold air came from down the hall, sharp and sweet with snow, to announce the visitor. Lily would have got up to see for herself who it was out of simple curiosity and boredom, but Lucille came straight in to announce the company.

“A visitor for you, Miss Lily,” she said, not so grumpy as she usually was, with a flush of something that might even be curiosity.

“Who is it?” Iona said patiently.

“A strange little man, called Mump or was it Bump, who,” she added in a disapproving tone, “has no French.” Lucille had very little English, and was proud of that fact.

Lily was up and flying down the hall before Lucille finished, and there he stood: Cornelius Bump, as true as life. No taller than she was herself and humped of back, with a face as creased and folded as an apple forgotten in a dark corner of a winter cellar. His head, the shape of a lopsided egg, was covered with a thick pelt of hair that stuck out from under his cap as straight as straw, the color of yams heavily peppered with gray. His long earlobes were fire red with cold, in contrast to the blue of his eyes, endlessly old and wise and sweet, her old Bump, her friend. Lily's face was wet with tears as she hugged him.

“There now, girl, there, Lily my sweet. No call for tears, none at all.”

She did not trust her voice at first and so she hugged him again. He had always been small and light of bone as a bird. As a child she had often asked him if he was a pixie, a question he had never answered with anything but a smile.

“I've been wishing to see somebody from home,” Lily said. “I've been wishing and wishing. And here you are. Did you come from Paradise? Did they send you? Do you have news? You must be hungry.”

He laughed at her good-naturedly, the odd little man who had been such a friend to her when she was a girl. While she tugged his coat from him and his cap and his mittens he answered her questions: he had indeed come from Paradise with news enough to tell and he would welcome a bit of dinner, milk would be much appreciated if there was any to be had, and would Lily remember her manners please, they weren't alone in the house after all.

She took him by the arm and led him into the dining room, only to find out that there was no need of introductions; Bump was no stranger to Wee Iona.

Iona, as settled and unflappable an old woman as Lily had ever known, was so happy to see Bump that there was a glittering in her eyes when she took his hands in her own.

“Weel, and look at you now, Cornelius. Look at you. How long has it been? And are you well?”

“Too many years, Iona my dear. Old bones and growing older, but old friends too, to ease the ache.”

“And so they do,” Iona said, and without warning she leaned forward to kiss the old man on a bristled cheek.

Standing back, Lily watched and listened and saw things: Iona and Bump were much of a size, so that for once she herself seemed to be the tall one, without Luke here to prove her wrong. The servants saw how Iona had greeted the stranger and they began to flit around him, offering food and drink and the comforts of the house.

Bump said, “First things first.” He began to undo the letter case he wore around his middle, his fingers working the buckle and the ties and more ties until it was free in his lap. He unfolded the leather flaps and a whole great stack of letters appeared. Most of them he put on the table. “For Luke.”

On the top of the pile Lily recognized a letter in Jennet's small, angled handwriting, but then Bump was holding out more letters, to Lily. A smaller packet tied with string. Lily could barely keep her hands from trembling, and the urge to get up and run from the room was so strong that for a moment she feared the others must see her agitation and ask questions she couldn't answer. This was the first post she'd had from home since the news about Dolly's death.

“There are packages for you in the sleigh,” Bump said. “But I expect the letters are what you want first.”

She nodded because she did not trust herself to speak.

“Now,” Bump said with a smile that showed off a row of small white teeth. “Is that soup I smell?”

Lily's hunger had disappeared, but she ate nonetheless from the bowls and platters that Jeannette and Lucille put on the table: stew thick with potatoes and bacon and beans and cabbage, fresh brown bread still warm from the oven. A steaming bread pudding studded with cherries and apples and currants, with a jug of cream to pour over it.

She had so many questions to ask but then so did Iona. Lily must wait, though she could not keep herself from jittering while they spoke of the war and of old friends and of the things that Bump had seen and heard as far away as Washington and Baltimore and Philadelphia. The letters in her lap seemed almost to hum at her, as impatient to be read as she was to read them.

“I didn't know you came so far north in your travels,” Lily said when it seemed that Iona had had her fill of Bump's answers.

“Not often,” Bump admitted. “Only when there's special reason.”

“Don't you ever tire of traveling?” Lily asked him, because it had already occurred to her that it would be a fine thing, indeed, if Bump should decide to stay in Montreal for the winter.

At that Iona snorted softly. “You might as well ask your brother if he never tires of work. It's in the blood, is it not, Cornelius? Your mother's people were tinkers in the old country.”

At that Bump only gave them his small smile, the one that meant he would keep his thoughts to himself.

“Have you really been as far as Washington?” Lily asked the question more out of politeness than real interest, and because she imagined her mother had asked the same question. Her mother was always interested in what was happening in Washington.

“I have,” Bump said. “Though the credit must go to my good little horse. She does all the heavy work. Now you tell me, Lily, where is this Simon Ballentyne I've heard so much about? Is he gone to Québec with your brother, or will he come by this evening so I can see him? I did promise your father I would pass on a message to him.”

A silence fell around the table. Even Lucille, who had been gathering up bowls, stopped to watch Lily, who felt herself flushing with embarrassment and anger, white and strong.

“What—” she began in a voice that wavered and broke, though she meant it not to. “What do you mean? What have you heard?”

Bump's smile trembled and faded, and Lily's fear grew all the brighter, and on its heels came a keen cold anger. “Did my brother write home—” She stopped and tried to think how to say the awful things in her head. “What did he say? What have you heard?”

Bump's expression was solemn now, his quick blue eyes adding things together and taking things away. He said, “You're not set to marry, I take it.”

“I am not,” Lily said tightly. “I never have been. I never have been,” she repeated. “Not to Simon Ballentyne or anyone else.”

“I'm sure Luke never wrote of you marrying,” Iona said calmly. But she looked uncomfortable and ill at ease and that was all the proof Lily needed.

Iona said, “I'll write to your father straightaway, Lily, and make the truth known.”

“Please do,” Lily said. “Tell him I haven't seen Simon Ballentyne in a month and have no plans to see him.” She was trembling and so she folded her hands in her lap tightly and tried to smile.

Bump said, “I've handled this badly.”

“No,” Lily said quickly. “Not at all. It's not your fault, but my brother's.” She glanced at the letters in her lap and all her joy was gone, replaced by worry about what might be in them.

“I have more news,” Bump said. “And I promised your mother I would tell you myself. She didn't want you to read it in a letter.”

Lily's heart was beating so fast and loud in her throat that she couldn't speak, even to ask for the reassurance she wanted.

“Your uncle Todd is gone, Lily,” Bump said. “It was the cancer that took him, in the end.”

Lily nodded, because she couldn't say the things that were in her head.
Not my brother,
was what came to mind.
Not my father or mother, nor any of my people, thank God. Thank God.

But of course Uncle Todd was one of her people, she reminded herself, and she should feel sorrow. Uncle Toad, they had called him as children, and laughed behind their hands for their cleverness.

Uncle Todd who had been married to Kitty, who had first been married to Lily's uncle Julian. Family and not family; no blood kin but a man she had seen almost every day of her life before she came away to Canada.

For a moment Lily was unable to call his face to mind. Nor could she recall the last time she had thought about him.

As a little girl she had been afraid of Uncle Todd, afraid of his gruff manner and his sharp judgment and most of all afraid that he would try to hurt her father or mother again. She had heard the stories, and while there seemed to be an uneasy peace between the two families she sometimes dreamed at night of Uncle Todd with bloody hands.

Bump had put an end to those nightmares, when he came back to live in Paradise. Bump had known Richard as a very little boy and he had stories to tell, funny stories that he told right in front of the doctor, who turned an astonishing shade of red but never denied the truth of it. Bump had cured her of her fear of her uncle, but Lily had been grown before she learned to see past his curt manner, to the sharp wit and sense of humor.

Her uncle had never spoken to her of her drawing, but he sometimes brought her paper when he came back from one of his journeys, and once a set of pencils that came all the way from France.

It was Bump who had cured her of her fear of Uncle Todd and now he had come to tell her that he was dead.

“Did you come just to tell me that?” she asked, and blushed to hear how raw the question sounded, how childlike.

“Not just that,” Bump said. “But that's the worst news I have, and I wanted to get it out of the way.”

Lily felt herself nodding, felt some of the fear and worry leaving her at this. Then she thought of her uncle again and she wondered about her father, how he had taken the news and if he had been happy or sad. In the spring they would dig his grave in the small graveyard behind his house where Aunt Kitty was buried with the babies she had tried to bring into the world. Her cousin Ethan was alone now, in a way Lily could hardly imagine.

She said, “I must write to Ethan.”

Bump smiled at her. “That would mean a great deal to him, I'm sure.”

In her chamber Lily closed the door and drew her shawl tight around her shoulders though the room was quite warm. She sat on the edge of the bed under the embroidered silk canopy that had been Giselle Somerville's when she was a young woman. On the lace counterpane worked by nuns Lily put down her letters and studied them for a moment.

One thick letter from her mother; another one, even thicker, from Jennet; the last, a single sheet, from Curiosity. Nothing from Nicholas Wilde.

Disappointment had a taste, sharp and salty. She chided herself for her foolishness, for her hope, for her faith in a man who had never been able to claim her and never would.