Lake in the Clouds (12 page)

“She didn’t take the news too hard. Didn’t seem to care at all, to tell the truth.”

Jemima swallowed down her disappointment. Hannah knew then; she had heard it from Liam himself. They had met someplace, maybe on the mountain earlier today. Maybe last night.

“I doubt that,” she said tartly. And then Jemima turned her frustration in Charlie’s direction.

“What are you staring at?”

He shrugged one bony shoulder and inclined his head. “Nothing but you getting yourself in a temper, Mima.”

“Maybe you can sit around all day on your brains, Charlie LeBlanc, but I got work to do.”

Liam said, “Before you go, let me ask you a question.”

She willed her expression as still as stone. “For somebody who asks questions so free you got precious little to say about yourself.”

“Now that’s true,” said Charlie. “Tell us where you been for so long, boy.”

Liam’s gaze flickered away from Jemima. “Went to sea for a few years before I settled in the city.”

“Well now, there’s a story to be told.” Charlie grinned and wiggled himself into a more comfortable spot on his stool. “Take a seat, Jemima.”

She answered him on her way to the door. “I’ve outgrown fairy tales.”

“Tell me first when you think that overseer will be back,” said Liam. “Got some business with him while I’m here.”

Jemima shrugged. “I expect you’ll have to wait until the end of the week if you’re set on talking to Mr. Dye.”

Charlie smiled broadly enough to show all five teeth he called his own. “Why, then you’ll be here for Anna’s wedding party.”

“Not if I can help it,” said Liam.

It was the last thing Jemima heard from him as she closed the door behind herself.

There was a singular and simple truth about teaching that made itself felt on Monday afternoon in Elizabeth’s classroom: even the best and most conscientious of students were simply incapable of concentrating in a thunderstorm, at first snowfall, or on the day that true spring weather made itself felt—as it had today. And this year was worse than most, because in addition to a cloudless sky and a warm breeze, the Dubonnets had decided that the time was right to turn their yearling hogs out of the winter pens to forage in the woods, and those pigs had chosen Elizabeth’s schoolhouse for their afternoon nap.

Over the years Elizabeth had coped with many challenges, but two pigs under the schoolhouse porch on the first day of spring must be interpreted as nothing less than a direct order from the heavens to dismiss her students early. The children were clearly of the same opinion; even Daniel, who could normally be counted on to persevere, had his head cocked toward the door and a distracted look on his face.

But in front of Elizabeth stood her youngest readers: Lucy Hench and Many-Doves’ oldest, Kateri. With one notable exception—Elizabeth cast a sidelong glance in Lily’s direction—the girls in her afternoon class were well behaved and biddable, but Lucy and Kateri were especially eager to please and serious about their schoolwork. They had been practicing for this recitation for a week, and now Kateri could barely be heard above the grunting of pigs settling themselves in the damp shadows under the porch.

She raised her voice, but the pigs seemed to take this as an invitation to provide a chorus, which they did with increasing enthusiasm and a rustling that made the floorboards tremble:

Every child in the room was struggling hard to keep from smiling as the pigs’ snorting grew louder. Kateri raised her voice until it wobbled:

“They’re stuck!” Daniel stood suddenly, and then realizing what he had done, he ducked his head. “Pardon me, but I swear at least one of those pigs is stuck fast. Cain’t you hear it?”

“Can we go see, Ma?” Lily was already at the door with the others crowding in behind her: Blue-Jay, Solange, Lucy and Emmanuel, even Kateri, her recitation forgotten.

Elizabeth was mustering the good grace necessary to capitulate when a high-pitched scream came from the other side of the door just as frantic squealing began just underfoot. The floorboards heaved, and Lucy jumped up on a desk in one neat hop.

“A panther,” shouted Kateri over the screeching.

“The poor hogs,” wailed Solange.

Lucy was sobbing through her fingers, her eyes as round as sovereigns. With a sense of foreboding Elizabeth realized that Lucy’s gaze was fixed not on the door, but the window. She turned just in time to see Daniel ready to climb through. She caught him by his shirttail and dragged him back, all flailing arms and legs.

“Just what do you think you are doing?”

“Going for help.” Daniel’s clear green eyes flashed defiance.

“You know there’s nothing to be done for those pigs,” Elizabeth said. “I will not let you put yourself between a panther and his kill. We will wait.”

The squealing stopped just as suddenly as it had begun, to be replaced by the sound of Lucy’s soft sobbing.

“You see?” Elizabeth said.

“Wait until that cat eats his way through more than a hundred pounds of pig?” Daniel’s jaw set itself hard, and for a moment he looked so much like Nathaniel in a contrary mood that Elizabeth was distracted.

“Somebody will come looking for us,” said Lily.

Blue-Jay said, “That could take hours.”

Elizabeth thought of sitting here with the children listening to the panther tearing into flesh, and then she imagined what might happen if they tried to leave. The smell of fresh blood was thick in the room now.

Once she had watched a panther drop out of a tree onto a man’s back. It seemed a very long time ago and it had lasted only minutes, but she remembered it all with perfect clarity.

“We will sing,” she said. “It has been some while since we had a singing party.”

Emmanuel said, “Miz Elizabeth, somebody might come by who don’t have a rifle. And you know that cat won’t like anybody coming too close.”

Solange drew in a wobbly breath. “Please let Daniel go, Miz Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth looked at her son, so tall for his eight years that she did not need to stoop very much to kiss his face, something she wanted to do very much right now. He looked back at her without flinching, steady in his purpose.

“I’ll be careful.”

He would try, Elizabeth knew that much. Daniel was clever and quick, but like his twin he had inherited a reckless streak from the Middletons that showed itself at inopportune moments. Blue-Jay had stepped between her children and disaster more than once.

She said, “You may go, but not alone.”

“I’m staying with my sisters,” said Emmanuel.

“Then Blue-Jay will come with you.”

Satisfaction slid across Daniel’s face, and resignation across Blue-Jay’s. At the window Daniel paused to smile at her over his shoulder before he launched himself through.

Blue-Jay said, “I’ll do my best,” and then he was gone too.

By the time Elizabeth had walked the five steps to watch, the boys had already disappeared into the forest behind the schoolhouse, headed downmountain.

Downmountain, toward the village.

“Maybe he’s going to tell Peter about his hogs,” suggested Emmanuel, answering the question nobody had asked out loud:
Why hadn’t the boys gone to fetch one of the men from Lake in the Clouds?

“Our pa is a good shot,” said Lucy, wiping her cheeks with her fingers. “Maybe that’s where they’re headed.”

Lily was studying the floorboards with exaggerated interest. Elizabeth lifted her daughter’s chin with one crooked finger.

“What is it? What is he up to?”

She shrugged away. “He’s been looking for an excuse to go down to the village all day. That panther just did him a favor.”

“And why is your brother so eager to go to the village?”

All three of the Hench children went very still. Kateri might have spoken up, if it weren’t for Lily’s hand on her shoulder.

Elizabeth said, “Does this have anything to do with Liam Kirby?”

“You mean the blackbirder?” Emmanuel was the worst dissembler Elizabeth had ever encountered; she could almost read the whole story from that one word and his expression.

“Is that what you call Liam?”

“That is what Emmanuel calls him,” said Kateri. “We call him Tsyòkawe,” giving Liam the Kahnyen’kehàka name
Red Crow.
No doubt it would stick, whether or not it was deserved.

“Liam Kirby is a young man of flesh and blood like any other,” Elizabeth said, trying to sound dispassionate and failing, even to her own ears. “No doubt you’ll see that for yourself soon enough.”

“But Lily’s already seen him, ain’t that so, Lily?”

Elizabeth saw from her daughter’s face that it was indeed so. She had disobeyed and gone after Hannah this morning. Now she understood Daniel’s rush to get to the village: what one twin dared, so must the other.

She said, “You followed your sister?”

Lily pursed her mouth. “Somebody had to look after her. But I didn’t interfere, you can ask Hannah.”

“I will do just that. And then your father and I will discuss this with you. In the meantime I believe you have sums to work.”

It was a testament to Lily’s guilty conscience that she complied without further argument. The others followed suit, forgetting or choosing to overlook Elizabeth’s offer of a singing party. And she was glad to be left to her worries.

This morning on her way to teach school, she had passed
Hannah at the strawberry fields and stopped only long enough to learn that Liam was indeed tracking Selah. Hannah had taken great pains to look unconcerned and unmoved, and she had failed completely.

Lily was bent over her arithmetic, but she was watching out of the corner of her eye, no doubt waiting to be asked about her adventure of the morning; she knew exactly how worried her mother must be about Hannah. Elizabeth swallowed down both her irritation and her curiosity. She could not ask her daughter for an accounting of her escapade without seeming to condone her behavior.

Sometime soon Nathaniel would be going to the village to look for Liam. Hannah had said as much, and Elizabeth could imagine the whole scene: Nathaniel stepping into the dim light of Axel’s tavern; Liam waiting there for him. No doubt Daniel would be close by. And tempers would flare. Not that Nathaniel would raise a hand to Liam. It wasn’t his way to strike out in anger.

And still. Elizabeth tried to see them all together: Nathaniel and Liam, Daniel and Blue-Jay. Tried to imagine how her husband would confront the boy they had taken in and treated as one of their own, but who had left them without a word and now was back, carrying threats before him.

Lily was watching her openly now. She said, “You’re going down to the village, aren’t you?”

Elizabeth nodded. Then she picked up the first book that came to hand and tried to read, trying to ignore the sound of the panther ripping muscle from bone.

Hannah had retrieved the last of the onions stored from the fall and was bent over the chopping board when Curiosity came in.

“This is one of them cures that is harder on the doctor than the patient,” said the older woman. She peered into the kettle of simmering onions and reared back, waving a hand before her face.

“I wonder what the good Lord meant, making so many of the best medicines downright ugly to deal with.” And then she took a hard look at Hannah, reaching up to pluck an onion skin from her hair and to wipe her cheek.

“‘You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have
made them drink tears by the bowlful,’” she quoted. “But I suppose it’s high time I took my turn with these poultices. You let me cut up the rest of this batch.”

“I’m almost finished.”

“None of that foolishness,” said Curiosity, pushing her aside. “You’ll run yourself ragged looking after our Selah. She sounding any better?”

Hannah nodded. “Some better. She’s asleep right now.”

“The best thing for her. No doubt this poultice done her good, but then there ain’t nothing like onion and camphor to shift a lung full of muck. Set down there and rest a minute, before you fall over.”

Hannah did as she was told, but the fact was that while she had been working all day at a punishing pace, she was still twitchy with energy. Since her morning’s errand she had pushed herself hard, moving from hearth to water bucket to sickbed and back again, bathing Selah’s head and wrists with vinegar water and changing her poultice, bent over the washboard, the mortar and pestle, the chopping board. She had paused only when Many-Doves brought her food, and ate it standing on the porch before she went back to work; and still she could not reach the state she hoped for, where weariness drove everything about Liam and the things he had said out of her mind.

And now here was Curiosity, who would want to hear exactly those things she had been trying to forget. She had told the story once to her father; she would have to tell Curiosity and all the others who would want to hear it for themselves, recounted word for word, until they were able to conceive of the man Liam Kirby had become.

She said, “Elizabeth should be home by now. Was she still in the schoolhouse when you passed by?”

Curiosity regarded her with eyes narrowed, but she answered the question. “She was there, all right. Dubonnet’s hogs made themselves right comfortable under the porch until a panther got after them.”

Hannah stirred the cooking onions and waited for the rest of the story, but Curiosity wouldn’t be hurried.

“Hand me that other knife, will you? Don’t like the feel of this one in my hand. So they was stuck for a good while, until the boys climbed out a window and come to fetch Joshua and
his rifle. I went along to see if there was anything left to be butchered. Peter will take it hard, losing both of them hogs.”

“And Elizabeth?” Hannah asked, dipping a rag into the bowl of vinegar and water she had prepared for Selah and touching it to her own forehead.