Lake in the Clouds (7 page)

“Take this to Walks-Ahead too.”

Elizabeth was surprised, but the look Bears gave her said
she should wait until Lily had gone from them before she asked questions. Lily did not see this, or did not take heed.

“A letter! Who wrote her a letter?”

“An old friend,” said Runs-from-Bears. “She will be glad to have it, but give her the soup first, or she’ll forget to eat.”

Elizabeth knew no person less prone to exaggeration than Runs-from-Bears, but she could hardly credit the story he had to tell. On his way home he had come across Liam Kirby. The boy had been waiting for him just where the Bonners’ property started on the north side of the lake, and he asked Bears to deliver a letter to Hannah.

When Elizabeth thought of Liam over the years since she had last seen him, it was with a strong sense of regret. He had left Hidden Wolf in the mistaken assumption that they had abandoned him forever; of that much she was sure. What was far more difficult and troubling was the question of why he had stayed away once they had come home again. Now, torn between happiness and bewilderment, relief and confusion, Elizabeth kept repeating questions even after Runs-from-Bears had told everything he knew. Liam was alive, well grown, and a likely young man—he carried an expensive rifle, Bears noted, and he had three good dogs with him.

“You’ll recognize one of them,” he said.

“Recognize his dog?” Elizabeth cocked her head. “Why would I?”

Runs-from-Bears blinked at her in the way that said she was overlooking the obvious, and that he would not carry on the conversation until she had caught up. But there were other, more pressing questions and so Elizabeth put aside the mystery of Liam’s dogs.

“Where has he been for so long? And why have we had no word of him?” This was not the question she wanted to ask, but she could not bring herself to say out loud what they all feared: that Liam had left without a word and never come back because he had taken what did not belong to him. Hannah refused to even consider that he would have done such a thing, but the facts were hard to overlook: when they returned home from Scotland in the fall of 1794, Liam had been gone and along with him their silver and the eight hundred gold guineas that had been all that was left of Hawkeye’s
inheritance. Liam had been the only one outside the family who knew where the money was hidden.

“But why did he not come here directly?”

“He is not sure of his welcome.”

“Not welcome at Lake in the Clouds?” Elizabeth’s confusion turned to sudden irritation. Then she remembered the letter Liam had sent along for Hannah, and she half-turned in the direction of the cabin.

“Walks-Ahead brought him back to us,” said Runs-from-Bears, following the line of her thinking.

Elizabeth said, “She was a child when he left, and so was he.”

Liam had run off from Hidden Wolf at thirteen, not quite a man but no longer a child. The attachment he had had to Hannah had been clear to all of them, and part of the reason his disappearance had been so inexplicable. Elizabeth wanted to tell Bears he was wrong: Hannah cared for Liam as if he were a brother, and nothing more. She opened her mouth to say just that, and stopped. She did not want Runs-from-Bears to blink at her again; she was not ready for that yet. Not until she had spoken to Hannah.

Elizabeth said, “I’ll go to her now.”

“Tkayeri,”
said Runs-from-Bears.
It is proper so.

The two families at Lake in the Clouds were in the habit of taking their evening meal apart. In spite of her true attachment to Many-Doves and her family, Elizabeth always looked forward to this time: the children were subdued by weariness and too preoccupied with hunger to concoct any last bit of mischief, while Nathaniel and Hawkeye tended to be most talkative after a day’s work, and in no hurry to get up from the table.

But tonight the normal rhythm had been upset. The appearance of Selah Voyager and Liam Kirby both on the same day had stirred the children’s curiosity, and they asked question after question until Hawkeye had to rap on the table with his knuckles.

“You three make as much noise as a nest of blackbirds. I’ll remind you there’s a sick woman in the next room.” He sent each of them a stern look, and in turn Lily, Daniel, and Ethan dropped their gazes.

“Now let me say this once and for all. You’ve heard every story there is to tell about Liam Kirby time and time again. We
won’t know any more until your sister has her talk with him. As far as that young woman is concerned, Curiosity will be here soon enough to clear things up, but let me remind you of something. I want you to listen to me now.”

He leaned forward, and his voice lowered. “She’s a guest here, and her safety is our responsibility. If you go talking to anybody about her, if you even say her name, then you’re putting her life in danger. Do you understand me?”

Lily and Ethan nodded, but Daniel’s mouth set itself in a hard line, one that said he would obey against his better judgment.

Nathaniel saw this too. “Say it, son. Whatever’s on your mind.”

Daniel glanced at Hannah, and then away. “It’s Liam Kirby who’s the danger,” he said, his voice wobbling with earnestness. “He ran off from here with—” Hannah made a sound deep in her throat, and Daniel paused. “And now he’s back, tracking Selah Voyager onto the mountain. I say—” His voice cracked, and a flush crawled up his neck. “Why don’t you just send him away, Da? We don’t need him here.”

Hannah said, “He deserves the chance to explain, little brother.”

“And what if it’s all true?” Daniel asked. “What if he wants to take her back to the city and collect a reward?”

“He doesn’t know she’s here, not for sure,” said Lily. “Maybe that’s not why he came at all.” She was looking to her mother for confirmation, and Elizabeth gave it to her.

“That’s why Hannah wants to talk to him,” she said. “To find out exactly what he wants, and if he knows about Miss Voyager.”

“Of course he knows,” muttered Daniel. “Uncle found him not five hundred yards from the trail she walked, and those dogs are good trackers.”

“If that is the case, then I will send him away,” Hannah said quietly.

“Maybe he won’t go,” said Ethan.

There was always something of a preternatural calm about Ethan, but today more than usual. He wore his worry for his mother like a caul.

Hannah had seen her mother die in childbirth, and she understood very well how vulnerable Ethan was today. If she was angry, she did not show it, but then Hannah rarely did: it was a
trick that Lily admired in her older sister but had not yet learned, quite.

She said, “If I send him, he will leave.”

The muscles in the boy’s throat moved convulsively, as if he would have preferred to swallow down what he felt compelled to say. “From the mountain, maybe. But you can’t send him out of Paradise unless he wants to go.”

All three of the children looked toward Nathaniel and Hawkeye in an unspoken request for their opinions. Nathaniel drew in a deep breath and blew it out again. “Daughter, read us that letter one more time.”

Hannah left the table and went to the desk to stand in the fading light at the window, her plaits shining smooth and blue black down the straight line of her back. She studied the letter for a moment, and then she read in her clear voice.

“‘Tomorrow I will wait at the burned schoolhouse at first light. I will come no further up the mountain unless I come with you. Please talk to me. Things are not always what they seem. Your true friend, Liam Kirby.’”

Hawkeye grunted. “Could mean anything,” he said. “I’m curious, for one.”

Nathaniel spoke directly to his son. “I don’t believe she’s in any danger, going to talk to him. We wouldn’t let her go if we thought there was. You know that, Daniel, don’t you?”

The boy looked up slowly from his plate, and then he nodded.

A firm knock at the door startled Elizabeth. She rose so quickly from her chair that it would have tipped over if Nathaniel had not caught it.

“It’s just Curiosity,” said Hannah, looking out the window. “And Galileo and Joshua with her. Thank goodness.”

Curiosity was so anxious to see the newcomer that she hardly paused to greet Elizabeth on her way to the sickbed the men had set up in the long workroom that ran along the back of the house. Hannah went with her, and Elizabeth busied herself with clearing away the meal. The men sat down to whatever work they had to hand, all except Joshua, who paced the room while he chewed on the stem of his pipe. Elizabeth liked Joshua, who had a dry wit and a surprising way with words, although he did not often choose to speak. Now she tried to
calm him by asking questions about Daisy and the children, which he answered politely but as briefly as he could without being rude. He would not be distracted, nor would he provide distraction; Elizabeth concentrated instead on getting the children to their beds in the sleeping loft.

Finally she stood again in the common room, looking at the book that lay open on her desk. Tomorrow she must teach; there were lessons to prepare. But it would be very hard to concentrate until this business with Selah Voyager had been resolved, and so she took up her knitting instead.

“Hard at work, I see,” said Galileo with his shy smile.

Elizabeth held up her half-finished stocking for his examination. Not beautiful, certainly, but she was proud of it nonetheless. Learning to knit had been one of the most difficult tasks of her life, but she had come to take comfort in the steadiness of the work.

In her childhood home young ladies knew nothing, cared to know nothing, of spinning or weaving or knitting. Aunt Merriweather discouraged even fine embroidery in the fear that it would lead to the need for spectacles, which she believed must necessarily have a detrimental effect on the interest of eligible young men. At Oakmere, Mantua silk and India muslin, embroidered lawns and satin brocades were ordered by the bolt and turned over to the seamstresses.

But now Elizabeth lived between two worlds, both different from Oakmere, and from each other: the other women at Lake in the Clouds spent much of their time curing deer and buckskin into leather soft and supple enough to make overblouses, hunting shirts, breechclouts, and leggings; down in the village flax was grown and harvested, spun and woven into linen in a laborious process that seemed to never end. In Many-Doves’ world, a girl’s reputation was built in part by the quality of her doeskin and the beadwork on her moccasins; in Paradise a young woman who could warp a loom was well regarded. Elizabeth stood empty-handed in both worlds.

Marriage had come suddenly, long after she had made peace with spinsterhood. Her cousins had gone to housekeeping with trunks of linens, silver, and china; Elizabeth had come with a good command of Latin, French, German, and the ancient and modern philosophies, a familiarity with literature from Euripides to Pope, a solid grasp of mathematics, but
without a spoon to her name, or a single practical skill. This lack was addressed to some degree by money she could call her own—the interest on her small inheritance from her mother, and that part of her portion of her father’s estate that hadn’t gone to creditors. Money bought fabric and yarn, buttons and thread and ribbon. But there were no seamstresses in Paradise.

Once a year she went to Johnstown to buy what could not be purchased in the village and in return for teaching their children, the women turned that raw material into clothing and household linens. And still Elizabeth had not been comfortable with this arrangement until she learned to knit, taking her lessons from Anna Hauptmann at the trading post for a full month before she turned out her first awkward pair of socks.

She had sent her aunt Merriweather the second pair of mitts she had finished, not to shock the old lady but as a testimonial: Elizabeth had come to New-York one kind of woman and had become another, one who could produce with her own hands at least some of what her family needed.

“You’re mighty far away in your thoughts, Boots.”

Nathaniel’s voice woke her up out of her daydreams. Galileo was humming under his breath as he whittled, Hawkeye and Nathaniel were cleaning rifles, and even Joshua had settled down to examine a trap that needed repair.

“I was indeed,” said Elizabeth. “But here I am again. I wonder why Curiosity and Hannah are so long.”

“Things to talk through,” said Galileo. “Got to know what we’re dealing with here before we send the girl on.”

Nathaniel and Elizabeth exchanged glances, but it was Joshua who spoke.

“We never meant for you to get mixed up in this,” he said, looking directly at Elizabeth. “Never meant to cause you any trouble.”

“You haven’t caused us any trouble,” said Elizabeth. “And neither has Miss Voyager. We would have done the same for anyone in need.”

Curiosity appeared at the door to the workroom, wiping her hands on a piece of toweling. “And a good thing too. The girl has got a chest full of trouble. She ain’t about to die, though, Hannah has seen to that.”

“How long before she can set out again?” asked Galileo.
Curiosity spread out a hand. “A week, I’d say.”

“Unless the child comes,” added Hannah. “Maybe she should stay until it does. I don’t like to think of her out in the bush.”

“She won’t be alone,” said Joshua. “That’s one thing you don’t need worry about at all.”

Hawkeye said, “We don’t need to know where she’s going.”

“Maybe not,” Curiosity said. “But there’s things you should know, and now’s the time to tell the story. You best start off husband. It began with you, after all.”

“I suppose you could look at it that way,” said Galileo. “As I was the only one to home when the first two voyagers came to Paradise. They had run off from old Squire VanHusen—you’ll know the farm.”

Hawkeye nodded. “German Flats.”

“Big family,” added Nathaniel.

“That’s right,” said Galileo. “How many children did the man have, Joshua?”

“Eighteen children of his own, and just as many slaves.”

“You know VanHusen?” Hawkeye turned to Joshua in surprise.

“I was born on that farm,” Joshua said. “My mama is buried there.”

Joshua told his part of the story in his usual deft manner: his father had been a slave of Sir William Johnson’s, while his mother belonged to Squire VanHusen; the two farms stood within a mile of each other on the Mohawk. Either Johnson didn’t want to sell Joshua’s father to the squire, or VanHusen wouldn’t buy him, but the family had always lived apart.