Lake in the Clouds (64 page)

“There ain’t much to tell,” said Bears in his even way. “The story goes that the boy was carrying a sack of quicklime on his shoulder when the seam gave way. Covered him pretty much from head to foot. By the time he could jump into the millpond the damage was done. Burned off pretty much all his skin.”

A quicklime burn was as bad as fire, but unlike fire it could only be put out by water. Some said a quicklime burn was worse than anything a flame could do. Once when Elizabeth had still lived in her father’s old homestead, she had seen a kitten fall into a sack of quicklime out in the barn; Galileo had put an end to the unearthly screaming with a quick blow of the scythe, but not quick enough to keep Elizabeth’s gorge from rising.

Now she forced herself to concentrate on the gleam of sunshine on Bears’ dark hair, threaded here and there with gray. When she could talk again she said, “What makes you think it might not have been an accident?”

Runs-from-Bears looked over to the porch of his cabin, where his daughter Kateri was grinding corn and singing to her little brother, who swung gently in his cradle board hung from a nail on the wall. It struck Elizabeth again that no matter how little men of different races might resemble each other physically, they were all prone to the same expression when they looked at their children: concern, fierce pride, awkward tenderness.

He said, “There wasn’t anyone there but the overseer when it happened. The boy won’t talk or can’t talk, but the men down at the mill have got their suspicions.”

When Elizabeth passed the story on to Nathaniel that night as they made themselves ready for bed, he went very still.

“You knew?”

He nodded. “Aye. My father told me about it. It explains some things.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Elizabeth could hardly contain her fury. “It explains some things?”

Then he turned to her, and the stillness in his expression made her pull up short.

“I can go down there right now and put a bullet in Dye’s head. It would be a pleasure, if that’s what you want. Just say the word, Elizabeth.”

“No.” She sat down next to him, deflated. “Not that he doesn’t deserve it. But …no. Why hasn’t Curiosity said anything? Why hasn’t Galileo? It is against the law to treat even a slave in such a manner. He could be charged and arrested, could he not?”

Nathaniel ran a hand down her arm, laced his fingers through hers and squeezed tight. “First off, there’s no proof that Dye had a hand in what happened to the boy. He’s a harsh man but I ain’t ever heard of him killing anybody—not even a slave—for the fun of it. A boy like that, strong and well trained, he’s worth a lot of money to the widow.”

“Then you don’t believe that Dye was responsible.”

“I didn’t say that. The thing is, we don’t know what happened, or why.”

Elizabeth jumped up from the bed, desperate to be moving. “I still don’t understand why Curiosity said nothing at all about this. Do you think—could it be that she …”

“Spit it out, Boots.”

She stopped, took in a great breath and let it out again. “Do you think she might blame us for Selah?”

What she wanted was a quick denial, but Nathaniel didn’t give her that. He ran a hand over his beard stubble and finally shook his head. “No,” he said finally, leaning down to unlace his moccasins. “I wondered about that myself, but I think it’s a sight more complicated.”

“Explain,” Elizabeth said, more curtly than she meant to.

He shrugged. “Curiosity wouldn’t hold what happened against us, you know her too well to doubt that. But both of them, Curiosity and Galileo, they seem to be drawing away. I think they want to keep their distance to protect us, in case there’s real trouble coming up on Reuben’s account.”

This thought jolted Elizabeth just as much as the picture of
the boy covered with quicklime. “Do you think that they … are they going to … take revenge?”

“I don’t know that they’ve got anything planned,” Nathaniel interrupted her. “And I’m not going to ask. You shouldn’t either.”

“Nathaniel, if they take the law into their own hands, the repercussions—” She stopped herself. “I want you to talk to Galileo. You or your father. Someone. Or I will talk to Curiosity.”

“It’s not Galileo we’ve got to worry about,” said Nathaniel. “Nor Curiosity. If anybody has got it in their heads to go after Dye, it’ll be one of Reuben’s own.”

Elizabeth was not much acquainted with any of the Kuicks’ slaves simply because they were not often allowed into the village, but she knew them by sight and by the stories she heard. Ezekiel and Levi were big men, quiet and competent and ready with a smile, and Reuben had been much like his older brothers. Their mother, though, was another matter. Curiosity had spoken of Cookie now and then.
Like a kicked dog biding its time.
Elizabeth recalled that comment exactly.

“This is very bad, Nathaniel.”

“Let’s just bide our time,” he answered her. “Curiosity says the boy cain’t hold on much longer, and then there’ll be the burial to get through.”

The next evening Hannah came home to Lake in the Clouds by the rising of the moon. The dogs gave no warning, so she took them by surprise when she opened the door.

Daniel saw his older sister first and he dropped the rope he was braiding to launch himself at her with a whoop. Lily was still a bit unsteady on her injured ankle but she followed close behind, tipping up the basket in her lap so that buttons rattled across the floor.

The twins made so much noise, asked so many questions, and flung so much news at Hannah’s head that Hawkeye had to restore order by picking up his younger grandchildren by their shirts and holding them in the air like wiggling puppies.

“I swear you two have forgot all your manners. She might as well be a raccoon up a tree for the way you’re belling. Now let your sister catch her breath.” His tone was just irritated enough
to get the twins’ attention, and they settled down into a sudden and reluctant silence.

As much as Elizabeth wanted to rush forward herself, she held back while Hannah greeted her grandfather and then went to Nathaniel. She spoke to him first in the language of her mother’s people, and said all the things that were expected of a good daughter. She looked happy to be home, happy and thankful too, but there was a weariness about her that went beyond the cost of a long journey. Hannah had left the last vestiges of her girlhood behind her in the city.

Elizabeth wondered if Nathaniel could see this change in his daughter. She hoped he could not.

“It is good that you’ve come home to us,” he answered Hannah in the same language. “It is right that we are together again.”

Daniel went running to fetch everybody from the other cabin and they crowded together on the porch to hear Hannah’s stories by the light of rushes dipped in pitch to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Lily thought it was worth the stink to be able to sit in the open and watch the moonlight dancing on the falls as they talked together.

Many-Doves brought Selah’s baby for Hannah to see. He was a big healthy child with rolls of fat under his chin and down his arms and legs, like an overstuffed doll. Hannah sat with him sleeping in her lap while she answered all the questions that came her way, from Kateri who asked her whether they had seen any sea monsters to Grandfather, who asked about the captain of the ship that took them down to the city.

It was one of Lily’s favorite things to do, everybody sitting together on the porch on a summer night. She leaned back against her mother’s legs; she could reach out a hand and touch her brother or her father, she could climb into her grandfather’s lap if she wanted, or into Hannah’s.

Blue-Jay asked Hannah to start from the beginning and she did just that, making it funny where she could so that laughter floated off into the dark and Grandfather and Runs-from-Bears made noises deep in their throats. Later when it was time for the story of what had happened on the Great Lake with Selah and the voyagers they wouldn’t be able to laugh
anymore. That was a story Lily didn’t really want to hear again.

By the time Hannah had told about coming to the city and all the family in the house on Whitehall Street, the grown-ups decided it was time to send the children off to bed. Kateri and Blue-Jay went without complaint but Lily begged and wheedled and argued even when Daniel gave in without much of a grumble. It wasn’t until she had earned herself an extra afternoon weeding the cornfield that she gave in, marching in a fury to the sleeping loft.

Her brother was waiting for her with arms crossed on the sill of the open window, the breeze fluttering in his hair while he listened to the grown-ups talking on the porch. She started to ask him was he completely out of his mind and did he like the idea of spending the rest of the summer weeding corn? But he hushed her with an impatient look and scooted over to make room.

“Quiet,” he whispered in her ear. “She’s just getting to the good part.”

Voices drifted up from the porch in fits and starts with the breeze, but a child with good ears could make out just about everything.

“You could have reminded me,” Lily whispered at him. “Instead of letting me get myself in trouble.”

Daniel just wrinkled his forehead and pulled her down beside him to listen.

They stayed that way for a long time while Hannah talked. She told stories of the hospital and the patients and orphan children Lily knew she was not meant to hear, things so sad and awful that Daniel couldn’t keep his sighs to himself and Lily had to nudge him to remind him that they weren’t supposed to be listening.

Then their father’s voice came up to them, clear and sharp from underneath the window where they knelt.

“Daniel. Lily. Bed.”

Lily went to bed, but she could not be commanded to sleep; she studied the shadows and wished she were brave enough to go back to the window.

“We had better not,” came Daniel’s whisper from the other cot, as if she had spoken her thoughts out loud.

Lily turned on her side toward him. She could make out only the line of his shoulder and head in the dark, but she knew he was looking at her.

“He wasn’t so very mad,” she said. “He calls me Mathilde when he’s really mad.” But she stayed where she was, and so did her brother.

After a while she said, “I thought I wanted to go see the city, but I’ve changed my mind.”

Daniel made a humming sound in agreement, and then she heard him sit up. “Lily, what are we going to do about Jemima?”

He came over to climb into her cot next to her, as he always did when there was something very important to discuss, or when he was worried; most nights there was something to talk about.

“There’s nothing we can do,” said Lily. She felt Daniel’s resistance in the set of the shoulder that touched hers.

“But she was trespassing. We’re supposed to tell.”

“Liam Kirby was with her, so he was trespassing too. Do you want them to get all worried about Liam Kirby again now that he’s finally gone?”

Her brother’s face was a pale oval, as familiar as her own face; she could draw him in the dark, if she had to. She could draw her brother if she were blind.

Daniel shook his head and his hair gave off the smell of pine sap.

“I suppose not. I just don’t like the idea of Jemima Southern wandering around the mountain and making threats. It ain’t right.”

“She sure was scared about us telling,” Lily said.

This was a conversation they had had many times already, and each time it ended just here, because they knew that there was something important at stake, something they didn’t understand and couldn’t ask about. It had to do with what went on between men and women, and that was one subject they didn’t talk about very much.

“She acted like we was going to take a treasure away from her,” said Daniel, echoing her thoughts.

“The thing is to stay clear of her for the rest of the summer,” said Lily. “What we have to do is to keep out of
Jemima’s way and maybe she’ll just forget about the whole thing.”

Later, Lily woke uneasy and confused. There were voices in the great room, whispering in the dark. Her mother murmured, and her father’s voice came in response, low and a little rough.

She rolled onto her stomach and raised her head to look over the rail.

A single candle sat on the mantelpiece throwing an oval of soft yellow light out around itself and up the wall. At the very edge of the light, Lily’s mother stood pressed against the wall with her father leaning in over her, one hand stemmed high on the wall. His other hand was on her shoulder with fingers spread so that his thumb rested in the hollow of her throat, where a single button had come undone.

Lily rubbed her eyes but they still stood there in perfect symmetry: the line of her father’s arm; the angle where his hand met the wall; the curve of his back; all those lines coming together to make a space that only her mother could fill. In the candlelight she turned her heart-shaped face up to him and a strand of hair fell down to curl on her neck. He said something and she laughed, the sound cut off suddenly when he dipped his head to hers.

Lily lay back down and closed her eyes, crossed one arm over her face to trap the picture they had given her, forever in her mind’s eye. Too precious even for paper.

It was a rainy morning, cool and sweet smelling. For the first time since they were returned from Canada, Elizabeth woke with a sense of well-being. Because there was a new child at the Todd house that meant some hope for Kitty; because Hannah was home again, changed by her time in the city but not wounded; because for all the sadness of the letters from Scotland she had brought home with her there was good news too: Luke content with his fate; young Jennet settled and married. Because her children were whole and safe and Liam Kirby was gone and would never come back to Hidden Wolf again.

It was true that they had less news of Manny than they would have liked, but what they knew was not desperate.
There was reason to believe he was well and would soon be home; Will had said so, and Will could be trusted. Another blessing to count. The summer stretched out before them with its troubles, but they were home together, and together they would manage.