Fire Along the Sky (42 page)

It was midnight before the women were finished, and then they sat, wrung dry and giddy with exhaustion, around the hearth.

“Where are the men?” said Jennet, as if she had just remembered that such creatures existed in the world.

“In the parlor,” said Sally.

Curiosity grunted. “No doubt with their dirty feet up on the good cushions.”

In his mother's lap Gabriel yawned. “They sent me away.” Too tired to show them the full measure of his resentment.

Elizabeth's long neck arched as she put her head back and blew a sigh at the rafters. “I cannot rouse myself to go ask questions, though I should.”

Many-Doves said, “Let them think they can plan what will come, if it comforts them.”

Jennet stretched a little and then looked around the circle. “I'm sorry to be so selfish,” she said, two spots of new color on her cheekbones. “But I canna wait any longer. What word do you bring from your brother Luke?”

Hannah saw Lily start up out of a near sleep, and blink in surprise. “Oh, my,” she said. “I meant to give it to you right away. I did promise him.” To Gabriel she said, “Would you get the parcel I left in the front hall?”

Suddenly they were all awake, roused by the promise of one of Luke's packages. When the boy came again, Jennet touched the bulky parcel and closed her eyes.

“It ain't going to open itself,” Curiosity said, a little impatiently. “Go on, girl. We could use something to smile about just now.”

There were two letters, first of all. One Jennet handed to Elizabeth and the other she put carefully aside. Then a lumpy object wrapped in paper proved to be two brightly painted tops; those went to Elizabeth too, though Gabriel followed them with his eyes. Then came beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs, a small muslin bag of oddly smooth nuts, a box of nutmegs and curls of cinnamon bark, a large tin of cocoa that brought exclamations from Gabriel, a length of silk in a deep bright crimson and one of figured damask in blue-green, packets of tea, and at the bottom of the box, two soft packages wrapped in many layers of silk paper. Jennet took the first one in her lap.

“Oh, my,” said Sally as the paper fell away. A length of lace spilled over Jennet's lap to the floor.

“Lace,” said Curiosity, with a crackling satisfaction. “Fit for a bride.”

“Valenciennes lace,” added Elizabeth, catching one end in careful fingers to examine it more closely. “What workmanship, and look at the pattern. I have never seen the like.”

“The color suits your complexion just right,” Curiosity said. “That's a thoughtful man you got yourself, Jennet.”

“What's in the next one?” Sally asked.

“Some silk, maybe,” Curiosity said, as excited as a bride herself.

They all leaned forward as the paper was unwound and another length of lace came to light.

“It's not for me,” said Jennet, reading a piece of paper that had fallen into her lap. “It's for Lily. ‘A wedding gift,' it says.”

In the silence that followed they heard the men's voices in the hall. Lily, who had gone very pale, looked no one in the face. She said, “It is complicated.”

“I suppose it must be,” said Curiosity. “But we ain't slow, child. You tell us, and we'll ask questions when we get confused. Or maybe we should call in Simon. He's right good at putting things in words, I'll bet he can explain it.”

Gabriel, invigorated by the news, stood up as the hall door opened. “Da,” he called with all the energy of a boy bent on bringing down the roof. “Our Lily's getting married!”

In the doorway Nathaniel pulled up short, and then came into the kitchen slowly. Behind him were Runs-from-Bears and Ethan.

Lily touched the lace in her lap: a pattern of swirled petals and delicate leaves in a pale rose color. When she looked up she saw her father's face and her mother's, both of them slack with weariness and worry and yet watchful, as if a strange creature had walked into the room and they were not sure, quite yet, what to make of it.

Then Simon was there too, his expression so sober. Lily wanted him to smile, to make light of it all. To take away this question that hung in the air, almost visible: more than she could bear, now.

He said, “It is a matter that should wait, I think, until I come back from Nut Island.”

“From Montreal,” said Jennet. “When you come back from Montreal.”

All eyes turned to Jennet. Lily was so thankful to her cousin that she might have wept.

Jennet said, “It has been months since I've seen Luke. I would like to go to Montreal, just for a short visit. Since you are going that way anyway, Simon Ballentyne, you'll not refuse me, will you?”

Chapter 25

Luke Scott Bonner, Director
Forbes & Sons
Rue Bonsecours
Montreal

Dearest,

If you are the wise and thoughtful man I believe you to be, you will not strike out at the messenger who brings you this letter. Simon Ballentyne has done only as I compelled him to do. If he has taken my advice, you are reading this alone, and he will absent himself until you have had time to remember that if you must be angry, it should be at me, and me alone.

I am in Canada, with your sister Hannah. We are well; we have adequate shelter and food and are in no danger of our lives or persons. We are, as you will have guessed, on the Île aux Noix, or Nut Island. I will use the English, as the French name is far too exotic for such a rough jumble of blockhouses and barracks and parade grounds and boat works.

Sawatis and Runs-from-Bears are here, just returned from their short visit with you. Thus you know what brought us here, so let me give you the most important news straightaway: your brother and cousin are alive, if in some danger. It is for them we came, but it is only today that we are assured of the possibility of caring for them.

After three days of waiting, your sister was finally admitted to an audience with the garrison commander, a Colonel Caudebec, originally of Québec, a man unknown to Simon and thus I would guess to you as well. The colonel was at first affronted by your sister's temerity and then too harried to resist her persistent logic; he has granted us permission to come inside the garrison from sunrise to sunset every day, if we restrict ourselves to the stockade.

There are only two surgeons here, and they see to the needs of hundreds
of the soldiers and sailors and militiamen who come through daily. And had they time, I doubt they would find their way into the stockade for fear of the smallpox, which has taken many lives in the past weeks.

Now I ask you to remember that I was vaccinated against the smallpox at the same time you were, by Hakim Ibrahim. Likewise are the rest of your family safe, for your sister saw to their vaccinations long ago, the summer that she interned at the Kine-Pox Institute in Manhattan.

Here is what we know thus far of the conditions in the stockade after Hannah's first brief visit there today:

There are some fifty prisoners in a room designed for thirty, at the most. A month ago there were still more of them, but illness has reduced their number by a full third. Many have dysentery. Others have wounds that are poorly healed and require surgery, and perhaps amputation. They exist on a diet of poor gruel and bread. The food we brought with us, which seemed so much, is already gone. Hannah's medicines will last a little longer.

Blue-Jay has lost two toes to frostbite and may lose more. He took a bullet to his right leg, which was dug out for him by one of his compatriots. What infection resulted is mostly healed. Like many of the prisoners he has had typhoid, but unlike the majority of those unfortunates, he has survived and is recovering. He is thin, but in relative good health.

News of Daniel is more complex. His injuries are as follows: he took a bullet in his left side. Hannah bids me tell you that if the bullet had done irreparable harm, he would not have survived this long. Whether or not she will have to remove it surgically remains to be seen.

All the other injuries follow from the fact that he was in a tree when he was shot, and fell from a considerable height. He suffered a blow to his left shoulder and arm, and a number of ribs were cracked or broken.

Somehow he was spared typhoid, which would most certainly have killed him in his diminished condition.

Hannah had only a few minutes with him today, but she bids me assure you (and by extension, your parents) that with proper care, medicines, and food, he will recover. We are here to see that he gets all those things, and more.

The best indication of Daniel's condition I can send you is this: when Hannah came to him he was asleep, but woke and seeing her asked if she had brought any maple sugar from the first tapping. His second question was about his sister Lily, and his third, about his mother. Then he fell asleep again with maple sugar on his tongue.

You may not believe me, but I did not plan this turn of events. I truly meant to come straight to you, and to stay as long as you would allow me. But given the conditions here, what choice is there left? I could not, I simply could not leave Hannah here alone while I went on to feather beds and hot baths and amusements in Montreal.

You will argue, I can hear you across the miles, that she is not alone. But while these good men look out for
our
safety, they cannot go into the stockade to care for those whose need is far greater.

For what assurance it might provide, let me tell you of our lodgings in the followers' camp. We have paid for the privilege of putting down our pallets in a hut that belongs to an Abenaki woman who does laundry for some of the officers. In exchange for tobacco and coin she has given us much information and advice and a place at her smoky fire. It is of course the coarsest of housing, but we are only there while Sawatis builds a shack for our use, and in any case, we are there only to sleep.

You will want to come here, to take me away. I ask you to reconsider. If you must come, bring food and warm blankets and money to bribe the soldiers who guard the stockade, on whose goodwill and whim we must depend. Bring your support, your understanding, your patience. If you cannot, please stay away, but send us Simon with the things we need, and I will write to you as often as time permits.

Of course we must count on you to relay this information to your father and stepmother. It is your decision whether or not you will pass on all the details. And yet I must remind you that your stepmother is a strong woman and will not thank you for keeping the whole truth from her.

Finally, you should know that neither of us have ever used your name, nor shall we. The commander does not know of our connection to you, to Carryck, to Daniel, or to any family in New-York State. Here I am known as the Widow Huntar.

I will come to you, I promise, as soon as I can do so in good conscience.

Your loving bride,
Jennet
6
^th
day of March, 1813

Chapter 26

When they had been on the island for not quite a fortnight, the thaw came upon them and forced a concession from Jennet, who had only scoffed at the stories: Canadian mud was not just water and earth, but a force unto itself, and a bloody-minded one, at that.

It all happened very suddenly. One night it snowed, the next day snow turned to rain, and within hours the island, overpopulated with pigs and dogs, mules and horses and men, had been churned into a great sticky pudding that sucked boots from feet and brought sleighs to a standstill. There were still frosts at night, and deep ones, but every day the weather was a little warmer, and the mud deeper.

“Sugaring days come around late this year,” one of the prisoners told her in the same wistful tone he spoke about his wife and children. “But the sap's running now, I can smell it in the air.”

So many of the prisoners were farmers and backwoodsmen; they talked very little about the war, but never tired of talking of the weather. Most of all they seemed to get pleasure in arguing: about the best way to tap a sugar maple or neuter new lambs or set a trap for a raccoon that wouldn't stay out of the corn. The muddy floor of the stockade was easier to forget, Jennet realized, when they set their minds on blackfly in July or harvesting flax.

At night when she and Hannah went back to their little shack, they found dried mud in their belly buttons and the creases behind their knees and under their arms. The hems of their dresses and stockings were caked with it; there was mud in their hair and eyebrows and in the baskets they used to carry supplies into the stockade. The only respite from the mud was the ice-clogged, swollen river, crowded with every vessel the British navy could commandeer.

Within days Jennet had forgotten completely what it meant to be warm and dry and clean. It was only the work that distracted her from chilblains and blood blisters and the growling of her own stomach. There was little food, or time to eat it; certainly she would waste no time on vanity.

Except that today she must rouse herself to notice such things and more. Shivering still from her sponge bath, Jennet took a gown from her traveling box. It should have been suitable for her meeting with Colonel Caudebec, except that the damp had found it first and the damask was sprinkled liberally with mold, and wrinkled beyond repair. Even to her desensitized nose it stank.

“I suppose the smell might get his attention,” she said in a conversational tone. “Perhaps he'll give us the braziers just to get rid of me.”

Hannah, her mouth full of cornbread, held out another gown. This one, never pretty, had seen hard use in its life; it was stained at hem and cuffs and a burn on the skirt had been patched with a fabric that matched neither in color or pattern. And still it was the best they had between them.

“I'll have to kittle up the skirt with my belt,” Jennet said, reaching for it. Water ran from her hair over her arm and hissed into the fire.

Hannah said, “Come and let me comb through your hair again, and then we must be gone. It's almost light.”

Jennet did as she was bid, pulling the cocoon of blankets more closely around her shoulders.

“Tell it again,” Hannah said.

Jennet said, “Braziers, firewood, rations, Sergeant Jones.”

“But not in that order,” Hannah prompted.

“Not in that order. Jones first, or nothing else will do any good.”

Behind her Hannah hesitated. “It's a fine line you'll have to walk.”

“Och, that you leave to me,” Jennet said. “I'm a daughter of Carryck, you mustn't forget. Did my father the earl not declare I could charm blood from a stone?”

“We don't need any more blood,” Hannah said.

Jennet's mouth tightened. “We'll be rid of the wee Welsh cockerel before the day is out, or I'm no my father's daughter.”

Just before sunrise they took their leave from Runs-from-Bears and joined the queue of women waiting at the garrison gates, all of them with blankets wrapped around their heads against the cold rain, all of them ankle deep in the muck and mud. Most were bent low by the weight of baskets filled with laundry or mending. A few of the youngest, still supple or pretty enough, carried nothing and wore little under their blanket coats.

Most of the women greeted Hannah, but to Jennet they gave only shy nods. Jennet might dress rough as they did and her hands might be as blistered with work; she could speak Scots and plain English and a common French, but the cap of damp curls under her hood was the yellow of corn silk, and her skin was as translucent as milk after all the cream has been skimmed from it. A white woman among the camp followers was odd enough, but one as young and fine-born as Jennet Huntar who was here to nurse prisoners of war—she must be a mystery and a danger.

The gates swung open and the crowd pushed forward.

“Do not put yourself in danger,” Hannah said as they went forward. In response came only her cousin's grin and a fluttering of fingers.

“What is there to fear, with Sergeant Brodie to escort me?”

Waiting for Jennet just inside the gates, Uz Brodie heard this, exactly as Jennet meant him to. His cheeks had been scrubbed clean, resulting in two very red and shiny spots to either side of a blue-veined nose. On that hard-worn face a schoolboy's blush was both comical and touching.

In the followers' camp Jennet was an object of suspicion and some jealousy, but inside the garrison a pretty young Scots widow with a friendly word for everyone was highly thought of, and sought out. Doors opened quickly when she approached, and jackets and hats were put to rights. There were a dozen men who took every opportunity to cross paths with her, and then always found some topic to keep her talking for a minute or two.

In the first days the men had hesitated to ask questions. Then one of them had got up the courage and wondered out loud what it was that brought a young woman of good family to Nut Island. Jennet, ready for the question, had cocked her head to one side like a little bird and returned curiosity with wonder and Bible verses. And, she added, innocently enough, wouldn't any of the brave men of His Majesty's forces want and deserve a nurse like herself should he ever find himself, Lord preserve, on the other side of the border, in such a place as this? Among themselves the men decided that Mrs. Huntar was a war widow, a rumor that she did nothing to correct.

When asked about her connection to the Mohawk medicine woman called Walks-Ahead, Jennet would change the subject so neatly and sweetly that no one noticed, at least until it was too late, that she had provided no information at all. Jennet had the gift for pleasing and appeasing with a few bright words. It worked to their advantage and solved many of their problems, but not all.

Standing in front of the stockade was the problem that had sent Jennet to the colonel: one of the few men who had resisted her charms. Approaching him with mud sucking at her heels, Hannah kept her expression studiously blank.

“Sergeant Jones,” she said. “Good morning.”

He was a small man, soft of jowl and gut but with a jaw carved out of twisted gristle. The frizzled hair that showed under his hat had once been red, but had faded to a rusted iron gray. Wiry twists of the same color exploded from his ears and nostrils and cascaded over his pinkish eyes. When he opened his mouth he showed bloody gums studded with teeth like bits of weathered wood.

The muscles in his jaw popped and worked. Then he leaned forward and spat so that the gob of tobacco and spit landed just short of Hannah's toe. One of his better moods, then.

“Where's the princess?” he said.

“Mrs. Huntar had an errand this morning,” said Hannah. “She will be here soon.”

He considered her for a moment and then stepped aside just enough to let her walk by, though not without brushing against him. He smelled of sweat and stale tobacco and ale, and other things she did not want to contemplate.

As she passed he said, “I hear there's a pig upriver can speak French. But we got our own wonders, a redskin what talks like you.”

“For what do I live and breathe,” said Hannah, “but to amuse you, sir?”

There was no better way to rile Sergeant Jones than to speak above his understanding, something that was amazingly easy to do. For a moment Hannah thought that she had gone too far, but she watched him compose himself—he had not lasted so long in the dragoons without some measure of self-preservation. Hannah cursed her own short temper; she would have to be especially watchful today.

“I'll look forward to seeing her,” the sergeant said as Hannah walked away. “Coming here all alone, like.”

It was an empty threat. He might be prodigiously dim, as Jennet liked to put it, but Sergeant Jones was cunning enough to save his games for the prisoners who were least able to protect themselves. Sometimes, when she saw him from afar, Hannah was reminded of the fox she had killed so long ago on the mountain, and she wished for her bow, and a good straight arrow.

The armed guard at the double doors that opened into the stockade paid her less attention. Whether out of disinterest or fear of their sergeant, Hannah had never been sure. They went through her baskets, as they always did, and then the doors swung open.

The stockade was far better guarded than it was built. A building much like a stable, slung together as an afterthought. It had a few narrow windows that leaked cold through their shutters, a plank floor with mud oozing up between the cracks, and rows of narrow wooden bunks. On each bunk was a thin pallet of muslin ticking stuffed with straw, and on each pallet two men were meant to take their rest with the comfort of one or, if they were very fortunate, two blankets. The only heat came from an ancient and inefficient stove in the very middle of the room.

In her first interview with the colonel, Hannah had been informed that there was no space even for the most desperately sick prisoners in the regular infirmary, nor was there money or inclination to build a separate hospital for them. If the Mohawk medicine woman called Walks-Ahead was insistent on tending to the injured or ill in the stockade, then she must make do with a few tables, a pierced tin lamp, and however much firewood and water the prisoners were willing to haul for her. He said this with no malice or any emotion at all, and Hannah was thankful for his honesty, if not his lack of generosity.

As she stood at the door, fifty pairs of eyes turned to her, and she saw there what she saw every morning: surprise that she had not fled in the night, and varying degrees of relief and resentment.

One corner of the room she had taken over as her sick ward, but before she could go there and see her brother, she must spend the few minutes she had with the healthiest of the prisoners, who were assembling for work duty. One of them caught her attention immediately.

“Josiah,” she said. “They've put you on the work detail? How is your wrist?”

The young man bobbed his head and would not meet her eye. “It'll do, miz.” In the interest of their own safety and hers, the men knew her as Walks-Ahead. Some of them, the ones who were uncomfortable with her presence here, never called her anything at all, although they were polite enough, and tolerated her attention when they required it. She would have liked to think it was out of respect for her, but Hannah knew it had more to do with Blue-Jay, whose reputation as a swift dispenser of justice was well established.

She took a quick look at the young man's wrist, which had been badly broken and was still not completely healed. Certainly if he was asked to dig, the damage would be substantial. Hannah could go to the guards and ask for a favor, or to the sergeant and ask for a dispensation, or even to the garrison commander, if she felt strongly enough. But today Jennet was pleading a more important case in front of the colonel, and they must all tread very lightly.

She said, “If the wrist begins to swell, ask to be transferred to some other kind of work.”

Something flashed in the young man's eyes, and she knew that she had both amused and affronted him. Of course Josiah Adams would do no such thing. He was a hotheaded son of Vermont, and he would cut off his hand before he asked quarter of a redcoat.

Quickly she walked down the line, looking for signs of fever and asking questions. Most of the men were not well enough fed for the kind of work that they would be asked to do: hauling wood or water or digging latrines or building fortifications. None of them would complain.

Blue-Jay was at the end of the line, as always. Compared to most of the others he was in excellent health, and his mother would have wept to see him.

She said, “Let me look at your tongue.”

He shook his head, impatient, amused; boy and man she knew him, and expected little else. He said, “Daniel's fever was so high last night I almost sent for you.”

“I will have to take the bullet out.” Hannah said it aloud for the first time, and in response he blinked at her.

“Will you have the help you need?”

“Jennet will be here soon,” Hannah said. She spoke Kahnyen'kehàka, because it drew a wall around them in this place without privacy. “And there was a package from Montreal yesterday. I have the medicines I need.”

He might have had questions, but the queue was moving forward and the guards were quick to strike out at laggards. Hannah waited until the doors had closed and then began to pick her way across the room, crowded even now with half the men gone. From outside came a short scream and an explosion of laughter. Sergeant Jones, doing what he did best.

Hannah swallowed down her frustration and stopped to look at a man who had lost the sight in one eye. Every day he asked her when he would be healed.

The truth could not come as a surprise to him, but Hannah saw no need to rob him of hope, just yet. Instead she went to her little sick ward where her brother lay in this, his newest fever.

The prisoners were an odd mix of militiamen, army regulars, rangers, scouts. They were white and red, young and old, backwoodsmen, fishermen, and farmers from Vermont and New-York State and from as far away as Maine. The newest of them had been brought to the stockade just a week ago after a week's march. Of those fifteen men, six had already died, three were here among the hopeless, and the rest had been sent out to work.