Fire Along the Sky (38 page)

“You wouldn't like these priests, that I promise you.”

Drew Clarke said, “I was hoping there'd be a priest or two at the garrison. My Jeanne, she has got marriage on the mind, and she'll want a priest to do the job.”

An unfortunate turn of phrase, but it was said and Clarke must wait out the laughter. Then MacLeod unfolded himself from his spot on the floor and raised both hands in the air in a gesture that managed to be both forceful and easy.

“Brodie,” he said. “Tell the whole story, now. Wasn't there a parson too?”

Simon's head came up suddenly. “I've heard of this. A Mr. Brown, who's got the habit of moving laggards into battle by thumping them with his Bible.”

This time the laughter went on for so long that Lily gave up her work for a moment until the worst had passed. Her subject on his stool before her ducked his head but could not hide his embarrassment. He grinned at Lily, sheepishly.

“I take it you had dealings with this Mr. Brown,” she said, going back to her drawing.

“Well, yes,” he said, subdued. “I did. But it was an accident, him falling into the river, I swear it.”

“Bible and all,” said MacLeod. “A sorry accident indeed.”

“And Forsyth? Did you ever get a look at him?” Lily asked, and felt Simon stiffen beside her, as if she had given too much away about her own interests and loyalties.

But none of the men seemed to be unsettled by her question, and instead launched into piecing together what news they had of the campaigns along the St. Lawrence, where raids moved back and forth with regularity and the smugglers had grown bold. Lily listened, but heard nothing of Jim Booke's riflemen or her brother or Blue-Jay, and after a while the conversation turned in other directions.

She had done drawings of most of the men when weariness overtook her and she excused herself, leaving Simon to talk to the men while she retired behind her blanket.

“A fine wife you've found yourself,” she heard MacLeod say to Simon, who made a deep sound in his throat, the one that a Scot made when he was deeply satisfied, but didn't care to say so plainly.

She thought of calling out that she wasn't his wife yet, and that she did not care to be handed off so easily, when another voice spoke up.

“Her brother approves the match?”

“And if he didn't, it's not the brother I'm marrying,” said Simon.

“You're still partners, you and Luke.”

Lily reminded herself that these men were trappers, and would go back to trading furs when the war was done; they weren't so much interested in her marriage as they were in Luke's business affairs, and by extension, Simon's.

“Aye,” said Simon sharply.

“I was just asking, man. No need to bristle.”

“Well, you're talking about his wife's family,” said Uz Brodie. “A man's got a right to be prickly about something like that. Especially a man married to Luke Bonner's sister.”

“I heard tell she was pretty,” said another voice, one Lily couldn't put a face to. “But she's all hair and eyes. You'd have to shake the bed sheets to find her. I like more meat on the bone, moi.”

There was an ominous silence, and Lily imagined that Simon had fixed the speaker with his most displeased look, for the man muttered an apology.

“No offense,” he said.

“Not if you keep a civil tongue in your head,” Simon answered.

Fully awake now, Lily listened closely but heard nothing more about herself. Gradually she drifted off to sleep, only to wake and find Simon sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Am I too thin?” she asked him.

In the near dark she could not see if he was smiling, but his voice told her that he was.

“Slender,” he said. “And finely proportioned.”

“You've got no complaints, then.” She was angling for compliments, of course; too late she remembered that such tactics never worked with Simon Ballentyne and in fact took her just where she would rather not go.

“One,” he said. “I'm cold, and tired.”

She had meant to make him sleep on the other side of the blanket with the soldiers, but that would shame him, she understood that. And what difference did it make, really. She would never see these men again, and they believed her already married. She made room for him on the narrow bed and discovered that he had stripped down to his shirt.

“You cheeky—” She started, and stopped, too much involved with removing Simon's hand from her breast to talk just then. Finally she whispered, “You cannot be serious.”

“If you can be quiet, I can be aye serious,” he answered, his hands roaming.

She caught them up in her own and held them away from her. “We are in the same room with twenty-one strange men,” she hissed.

“There's a blanket.” He tried to kiss her but she turned her head away and felt his mouth on her cheek, as hot as a branding iron.

“Simon. A blanket is not a wall.”

“For a lass who grew up on the frontier you're aye particular, Lily Bonner. How do you think men and women who live in one-room cabins ever get bairns?”

That question silenced her for a moment, because of course it was something she had thought about quite often when she was younger and had first started contemplating the things that men and women did together in the dark. In her own home her parents had a chamber to themselves, but most cabins in Paradise had only one room where everyone slept together. Much like this.

A few feet away a man coughed softly and cursed to himself. Then came the distinct sound of piss hitting the walls of a metal pot in a forceful stream.

The ridiculousness of the situation struck Lily then, and her shoulders began to shake with laughter.

“Ah, that's more like it,” Simon said. “Laughing Lily, come to me, lass.”

“I will not,” she said, fighting off his hands, but with less conviction now. When he caught her up against him and kissed her, the last of her resistance faded away.

“I'll make too much noise,” she said. “I can't help it.”

“That's true,” he said, pressing her down into the thin mattress, his hands to either side of her face. “You are a noisy wee thing when I've got you beneath me. And you wiggle too.”

“You are—” she said, and bit back a gasp.

“Just where I want to be,” he said against her mouth, and caught up every bit of noise she could make in his kiss.

In the morning she waited until the voltigeurs had left the cabin before she came out from behind the blanket to wash and dress in the warmth from the hearth. Simon had gone out some time ago to see to the horses and hitch them to the sleigh. Outside she could hear the voltigeurs, getting ready to be on their way. Lily raised her chin high to face the twenty-one men who had listened to the muffled sounds that came from the other side of the blanket.

If any one of them grinned at her, she would simply pull out the gun that Luke had given her, and shoot.

With this happy thought in her head she stepped out into the bitter morning cold. And found that their number had grown: the clearing around the cabin was crowded with soldiers—proper soldiers, in uniform and standing in formation—with no sign of Simon anywhere.

Lily was too surprised to be frightened until she saw Lieutenant MacLeod's expression, and understood there was some good reason for concern.

Then she saw a band of Mohawk warriors at the edge of the clearing. Among them was a familiar face, and she stepped off the porch in that direction without thinking.

“Miss,” said a very English voice behind her. “If you would be so good—”

“Sawatis!” Lily called, waving. And then, aloud in her surprise and pleasure: “That is my cousin Sawatis. Oh, and see my uncle Spotted- Fox with him.” She was so excited to see those two familiar faces that she forgot again that there was reason to be concerned, and she turned to the man who had addressed her with a great smile.

It would be much later before Lily came to realize how well timed her smile had been; at first, she only saw that the man she aimed it at was blinking in surprise. Then, slowly, he returned her smile with one of his own, albeit small and awkward. The effort made his cheeks jerk, as muscles seldom used will twitch when pressed into sudden service.

As distracted as she was, Lily could not help but note that the smile suited him; it turned a fine-looking man into a strikingly handsome one. Severe, yes, but with an intense quality in his eyes that must draw women to him.

She noted all of this with one part of her mind while the rest of it dealt with the jumble of questions that had no answers: Where was Simon? Who were these soldiers, wearing colors she did not recognize? And oddest of all, it seemed that her cousin and uncle had joined the fighting, on the side of the British Canadians, when Sawatis' brother Blue-Jay was somewhere on the St. Lawrence fighting for the American side.

Then Sawatis and Spotted-Fox were close enough and Lily went forward, quickly, her hands extended, and greeted them both in their own language, the familiar sounds gushing out like water from a crumbling dam. Tears in her eyes, and she dashed them away, impatient with herself.

To each of their children who lived to reach a certain age, Many-Doves and Runs-from-Bears had presented a choice: they could stay at Lake in the Clouds, or leave to make a life among the Kahnyen'kehàka. Blue-Jay had stayed and so would Annie, no doubt, both of them preferring English names and a red and white world to one that was, in Annie's eyes at least, monotone; Kateri and Sawatis had gone.

Kateri had taken a husband from the Turtle clan at Good Pasture, a serious young man called Broken-Blade, who might have also joined the fighting, for all Lily knew. With a pang she realized that she had given these matters—these life-and-death matters—little thought in the face of her own problems. But Good Pasture was a good twenty miles to the east of here, on land that the Canadians called their own, something that the Kahnyen'kehàka studiously overlooked.

Sawatis had wanted to be trained as a warrior, and so he was sent to the Wolf longhouse at Good Pasture, where his mother had been born. To Spotted-Fox, who would take on his training and see to it he learned what was necessary. Spotted-Fox had lost his own children to typhoid and measles, and was glad to accept the responsibility.

But here he was, the boy Lily had grown up with. She had played with him and wiped his face, and now his scalp was plucked and he wore stripes of paint on his cheekbones. He had chipped an eyetooth, but otherwise his smile was unchanged, and his hands on her shoulders made her realize how tall he had grown, and how strong.

He said, “Satahonhsata!”
Listen.
“Do not turn around to look at the officer behind you, he is already suspicious. Smile at me and listen.”

In the same language she said, “What of—” She hesitated to say the name. “The man who brought me this far?”

“He is being held on the other side of the cabin,” said Spotted- Fox.

“Held?” Lily echoed. “But why?”

Gooseflesh had risen all along her back but she smiled as she had been told, and wondered if her muscles might freeze just as they were.

“You must tread carefully, cousin,” said Sawatis. “And gather your courage to you. The officer is no fool, and he will question you closely.”

Of all the things Lily might have asked, one idea presented itself: it could be no coincidence that she had come across family just here and now. She said, “Why are you two here? What has happened?”

Sawatis stepped forward to put his arms around her; it looked like an embrace between cousins, but when he spoke at her ear it was nothing she wanted to hear. “The soldiers are on their way to Nut Island. We will go with them, now that you are here to carry our message back to Lake in the Clouds.”

She tried to speak but he quieted her with his expression, and the press of his hands. “My brother and yours have been taken prisoner,” he said. “They are being held in the garrison stockade on the island.”

“Miss Bonner,” said the officer, so close behind her now that Lily bumped into him when she tried to step backward. Then she pivoted awkwardly, lost her balance, and fell at his feet.

He bent down immediately, this man who had appeared without warning and changed everything in the world. The officer leaned in closer. Even in her duress she could not overlook that he was, in a word, beautiful. His face was square of jaw and perfectly proportioned, with eyes as blue as the sky overhead. As blue as her own, but cold.

“I startled you,” he said. “My apologies. Have you injured yourself?”

“My ankle,” Lily said, and then she did something she had never done before. Out of agitation, out of fear for herself and her brother, for Blue-Jay and Simon, out of anger and pain and shock, she burst into tears in front of this strange man, and gave him an advantage over herself.

Anyone who lived in Montreal knew of the King's Rangers, three hundred professional soldiers of the first stripe, Canadians and Englishmen. And in command of the corps a Major Christian Wyndham, born in Canada but schooled in England. The details came to Lily by way of the company surgeon, who was called immediately to look at her ankle as soon as she had been carried into the cabin.

Mr. Theriot was a French Canadian, a small, round man who stank of stale tobacco, mutton fat, and rum. Lily remembered Curiosity's dislike of Canadian doctors; she would give a great deal just now for Curiosity, who would deal with Theriot and Wyndham too, in short order. Lily felt a bubble of frantic laughter try to push itself out of her throat, and bit her lip.

The surgeon did not take long to examine her ankle, and he never took a lancet from the box of instruments he had propped open—with a panther's skull, Lily saw—at his side.

She said, “I have a skull like that, at home.” And wondered how it was that such a thing could come out of her mouth at a time like this. The doctor didn't seem to notice, or care. He sat back on his heels and gave her moderately good news.

“The ankle is not broken,” he said. “But the sprain is serious. You have injured it before, I think?”

She agreed that, indeed, she had sprained it once as a girl, and quite badly. The same summer of the panther's skull; she almost said that too, but stopped herself by biting her tongue.