Lake in the Clouds (77 page)

“Lily.”

“Sorry, Mama—but how are you supposed to get everybody to the trading post in the first place, sister? Did anybody tell you that?”

“I expect that question’s already been taken care of,” said Nathaniel mildly. “Manny wouldn’t leave something like that to chance. Not with the stakes so high.”

Lily sat back suddenly, understanding crossing her face and worry following close behind. “Do you think—Strong-Words might be helping?”

“Maybe,” Hannah said, too lightly. “It would make some sense.”

Elizabeth tapped the table with one finger, looking from her husband to her father-in-law with narrowed eyes. “Why do I have the sense that this whole affair comes as no surprise to the two of you?”

Hawkeye grunted softly. “Manny’s been in these parts three,
four days at least, judging by his tracks. We figured when he was ready he’d show himself.”

“Why is he hiding?” asked Lily, looking from face to face. “Why doesn’t he just come home?”

“There’s a price on his head,” said Hannah. “That’s why.”

“He is alone?”

It was the question Nathaniel had dreaded, and it came from Elizabeth. He looked her in the eye and lied.

“As far as I saw,” he said.

Lily said, “I hate it when people won’t say straight-out what’s on their minds. Da, what’s going on?”

Elizabeth shot Nathaniel an irritated look. “Yes, I have to agree. For our own safety we need to know exactly what it is you’re planning.”

Nathaniel pushed his empty plate away from him and leaned back in his chair. His wife and daughters were angry and scared, but there was no easy way to calm their fears—or his own.

He said, “Well, Boots, the plain truth is, I’m not planning anything at all except seeing that we all keep safe. So I want you to listen close. Once we leave for the trading post none of you is to move farther than three steps from me or Hawkeye. There’s trouble afoot, but if you stick close you’ll stay clear of it. Now before you take another chunk out of me, Elizabeth, I’ll say this much: I don’t know what it is that Manny’s got planned, and I ain’t about to sit here and guess either.” He paused, and when Elizabeth had nothing to say, he cleared his throat and went on.

“We’ll go down to the village like we said and we’ll let Hannah here take the virus from these pretty blisters on our arms, and when she’s done with the vaccinating, why, we’ll come on home again. That’s the plan, for the moment, or the best I can do, anyway.”

Elizabeth looked only vaguely mollified, but she nodded anyway.

Nathaniel pushed back from the table. “I’ll go have a word with Many-Doves and Pines-Rustling now. Be ready to leave in ten minutes.”

Hannah’s first worry was that nobody would show up to be vaccinated, but even before they came in view of the trading
post the sound of voices put those fears to rest. The place was crowded, but whether that was good news or bad wasn’t clear; some folks didn’t seem to want to meet her eye, while others called out greetings in voices too loud and hearty. She threaded her way through the crowd, nodding at some and speaking a few words to others. There was a fine humming tension in the air, like swarming bees in the distance, but it wasn’t until she was in the middle of the room that she saw the reason.

All of the blacks from the village stood there, slave or free, as Strikes-the-Sky had promised. All except Curiosity and Galileo. How strange it was to miss someone so fiercely and still to be glad they were safely somewhere else.

There was no talking or laughing among the blacks; their expressions ranged from fright to numb watchfulness. Cookie nodded at Hannah briskly, and the others followed her example.

Richard Todd was here already too, although there was no sign of Kitty or Ethan. He had his back to her as he made notations in the record book he had laid down on the top of a barrel of salt pork. The instruments they would need had been spread out neatly on a tray—by Bump, Hannah saw now—who was busy lining up ivory vaccinators. He paused to swing his head toward her and smile.

Richard straightened finally, grunted a greeting in Hannah’s direction, and wiped his ink-stained fingers on a piece of linen he had draped over his shoulder.

“Time to get started!” he called out, loud enough to be heard on the porch and in the tavern too. “Those of you with eight-day blisters, step forward and roll up your sleeves. Those of you waiting to be vaccinated, you step back now until we need you. You too, Cookie, all of you. Just wait over there, it’ll be a few minutes before we can start.”

With the room so crowded it took a few minutes until the eight-day people could make their way to Richard: seven of Hannah’s family from Lake in the Clouds, Jane McGarrity, Solange Hench, and Nicholas Wilde. Nicholas was pale and there were deep shadows beneath his eyes, but Hannah was surprised to see him here at all.

He caught her glance and said, “Mrs. Cunningham is sitting with my sister. I’d be thankful if you could take care of me first so I can get back to her, Miss Bonner.” His tone as gentle and
polite as ever; there was nothing of accusation in his tone or expression, but sorrow had already dug in deep. Richard didn’t believe in giving families false hope, and he had told Nicholas Wilde straight-out how poor his sister’s chances were.

Hannah did as he asked, listening as she worked to Richard as he answered a question Jed McGarrity had asked about the vaccinators. For once Hannah was thankful for Richard’s gruff, efficient manner that made short work of gathering the virus from one person after another. Most of all she was thankful not to be alone just now in a room full of doubtful and worried people.

She was focused on catching the clear liquid from the blister on her father’s right arm when Richard faced the room again.

“We’re just about ready here. Roll up your sleeves, both arms, as high as they’ll go, and line up. Cookie, we’ll start with your folks so you can get back to work.”

An irritable voice rose from the back of the room.

“Dr. Todd! Are you planning on vaccinating them niggers without the widow’s permission? And why in the hell ain’t her man Dye here? Something ain’t right.”

Standing just beside her, Hannah’s father put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Steady now,” he said softly. “Let Richard take care of it.”

“That you talking, Tim Courtney?” Richard snapped.

A tall man as thin and knobby as old rope pushed forward from the crowd. “It is. And I ask again what right these slaves have to be here unless their rightful owner has sent them. Which don’t seem likely, you’ll have to agree.”

“You here to be vaccinated, Courtney?”

The long face tightened. “May chance I am, may chance I ain’t. What’s that got to do with those slaves standing there?”

“I’ll tell you. Anybody wanting to be vaccinated is welcome here. Anybody. If you’re not planning on rolling up your sleeves, then you just shut your gob and get out. If you think it’s your duty to go talk to the widow, why you do that.

“If you are here to get vaccinated, why then shut up anyway and mind your own business or I’ll throw you out of here myself.”

There was an uneasy murmuring in the room as people watched Tim Courtney for his reaction. He might take up the
challenge just for the joy of it—he was a known brawler—but on the other hand he wasn’t full drunk yet, and common sense might still prevail. Richard Todd had fifty pounds on him, and as mean as Courtney might be, the doctor in a fighting mood was worse, and everybody knew it.

Levi cleared his throat nervously. “Dr. Todd?”

“Yes?” Richard turned, still scowling.

He spoke with his gaze riveted on the floor. “It was Mr. Dye told us to come down and get vaccinated. Said he didn’t want to lose valuable slaves to no pox and we was all to get scratched this evening. If Mr. Courtney wants to ask, Mr. Dye will tell him. Last we saw the overseer he was going into his quarters at the mill, like he do every evening after supper.”

There was a moment’s silence. Richard turned back to Courtney. “Does that satisfy you, or are you going up to the mill to ask?”

Courtney hesitated for three beats of Hannah’s heart, and then he threw up a hand in surrender and shouldered his way to the back of the crowd.

“Let’s get a move on, then,” Richard said. “There must be forty people here.”

Hannah turned in surprise. She hadn’t bothered to count, but there were that many people here and maybe more, a third of them children. All of them rolling up their sleeves, all of them waiting to be vaccinated.

Just behind her Elizabeth said, “You see, you won them over.”

And her father: “They’re here because they trust you, daughter. Best get started.”

Hannah gestured to Cookie, and picked up a lancet.

The first lesson Jemima Southern Kuick learned that evening while most of Paradise was filing into the trading post was a simple but bitter one: no matter how carefully a person might plan and scheme, something was bound to get in the way, or as her mother had been fond of saying: man proposes and God disposes.

She had come so far and managed so much and still here she sat on her mother-in-law’s confounded Turkey carpet, bound hand and foot. It was only her anger that kept fear from getting
the upper hand; that, and her pride. Mother Kuick might snivel and howl, but she would not.

To Jemima’s right was her husband, pale, his hair disheveled and a cut over his cheekbone bleeding freely; to her left her mother-in-law rocked and moaned and sang snatches of bible verse. Just beyond her were Becca and Georgia, both of them as still and cold as stone.

And in front of them, sitting in the widow’s own rocker with a primed musket in one hand and a tomahawk in the other, was a tar-black man Jemima had never seen before. He was young, tall, broad of shoulder, well armed, and dressed from his moccasined feet to the crown of his shaved scalp like a Mohawk on the warpath. Streaks of red gleamed under each eye.

“Speak to him in French,” the widow hissed at her son. “Try
French.
Offer him anything he wants.” She sent a skittery sidelong glance in Jemima’s direction, and licked her lips. “Tell him you’ll show him the strongbox.” This last came out in a hoarse whisper, and Jemima knew exactly why: every penny that belonged to the Kuicks was in that strongbox, hidden someplace that even Jemima had never been able to find.

“Mother,” Isaiah said with a calm weariness. “I tried French. I tried English and German. If he speaks any of those languages he will not speak them to me.”

The black eyes watched them without a hint of interest in the conversation, and still Jemima wasn’t convinced that he didn’t understand every word.

The widow said, “Then you must try to rush him, Isaiah. The Lord will guide your hand.”

A shiver ran up Jemima’s back, as wide and cold as a river. “Don’t be foolish, old woman. Don’t you see he’s tied up just like the rest of us? You’re only making things worse.”

The widow made a noise deep in her throat and in response the black Indian inclined his head, lifted the cocked musket, and pointed it directly at her small white face. After a count of three he lowered it again.

“You see?” Jemima said, and her mother-in-law sobbed.

“What does he want?” Georgia asked, as she had asked every few minutes without pause or fail. “What does he
want?”
Her voice spiraled up and broke like a child’s. “Why doesn’t he just take what he wants and go?”

By the clock on the mantelpiece they had been asking each other and themselves that question for almost two hours.

They had just been finishing supper when the black Mohawk had walked into the dining room herding the servants in front of him with the musket tucked neatly into the niche under Georgia’s shoulder blade. The widow had taken one look at him and fainted dead away. When she woke again they were all in the parlor, and her precious son was tying her wrists together under the close supervision of a creature she had hoped never to see outside her nightmares.

While the others wept and prayed and rocked, Jemima considered. To start with there had been very little in the room that might serve as a weapon—knitting needles, the poker that stood against the hearth, a heavy crystal bowl that had survived more than one of the widow’s throwing fits, but each of those things was gone now; the black Indian had pointed at Becca, pointed at each potential weapon in turn, and then pointed out into the hall. When she had removed them all, he closed the door, turned the key, and put it in a pouch that hung around his neck.

Because there was no way to fight him, Jemima did the only thing she could: she made a study of his person. She memorized the angle where the broad nose met his brow, the shape of his skull, the line of the wide, full-lipped mouth; she counted the stripes painted on his face and upper arms, studied the tattoo of three dots below his left eye, and continued row by row down his face, his neck, his chest, and disappeared into his breechclout.

There was quillwork on his bullet pouch and his moccasins, an earring in one ear, and ornaments hung on rawhide strings around his neck: a leather pouch, a clutch of what looked like bear teeth, some wampum beads, a silver coin with a hole punched in it, a disk of wood with a stone lodged at its center, its edges carved in a geometric pattern.

“I have to use the necessary,” Georgia hissed, her fear giving way in the face of desperation. “Don’t you understand, you godless savage? The
necessary.”

“He doesn’t care,” Jemima snapped. “Piss your pants and shut up.”

“Why doesn’t anybody come?” Becca whispered. “Why doesn’t Mr. Dye come? Where is Cookie? Do you think he
killed them? Do you think everyone in the village is dead? Oh, my mother.”

Isaiah was rocking slightly, his bound hands on his knees and his head bowed, but he stilled at Becca’s words. Worried for his lover; more worried for Ambrose Dye than he was for his mother or wife—his pregnant wife—or even himself. A bitter taste filled Jemima’s mouth; words that she could not say.

A scratching at the door and they all stilled.

“Help!” screeched the widow. “Help me! Help me!”

The Indian got up slowly from his chair and came over to the widow, who ducked her head and cowered and whimpered, her bound hands raised as if to ward him off. His face was contorted with fury and disgust.