Lake in the Clouds (93 page)

Hannah stood looking down at her, her hands flexing at her side. In a clear voice she said, “Jemima, your mother-in-law has had a stroke. If you’d like me to, I’ll tend to her. Otherwise you’d best send for Dr. Todd.”

Jemima’s head reared up, and Hannah was taken aback. For that one moment Jemima looked her directly in the eye and all the old jealousies were gone, stripped away to reveal a woman Hannah had never imagined. Jemima Southern stood before her and so did the nameless Indian woman with a dead child tied to her chest, so did every woman she had ever seen laid open to the world, desperate and hopeless.

Just as suddenly as she had revealed herself Jemima blinked and that other woman was gone. She turned on her heel and walked down the church aisle and out the door.

Nathaniel grunted softly. “Best do what you can for her, daughter. At least until we can get Richard back here. Judge O’Brien, you stay right there and watch, I don’t want Jemima Southern claiming Hannah killed her mother-in-law.”

O’Brien swore under his breath. “I wouldn’t believe Jemima Southern if she swore on a pile of bibles that pigs is pigs. Constable McGarrity, I’ll leave this to you.”

He smoothed the fabric of his coat and walked away, his back ramrod straight.

Hannah knelt down. Elizabeth had already folded her cape and put it under the widow’s head. Their eyes met.

She said, “Did you know? About Liam?”

“No,” Elizabeth said, her mouth pressed hard. “I didn’t know. I intend to have a talk with him, though. There are some questions I will have answers to this very night.”

Lily had been standing quietly by while they worked, but now she spoke up. “But didn’t you see him go?” she said. “Liam Kirby’s gone and your answers with him.”

“Boots,” Nathaniel said sleepily, turning over and pulling the pillow up over his head. “We’ve been over this now twenty times at least. If I tell you that you’re right and that you’ll always be right about everything, forever more, will you let me go to sleep then?”

Elizabeth, sitting with her legs crossed in the light of a single candle, rocked forward to pinch him lightly. He jerked convulsively, sat up, and scowled at her. Then he yawned.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Perceptive man,” she said. “Now we must settle this matter before morning. Apply yourself, Nathaniel Bonner, or you will end up sending your eldest daughter off to her new life empty-handed.”

“Christ, Boots, you haven’t had enough excitement for one day? A burial and a wedding should be enough for even you. And tomorrow we’ve got a leave-taking, I hate to remind you.”

He watched the emotions chasing across Elizabeth’s face: sorrow and resignation and then a softer joy. For Hannah, married this evening in a simple ceremony that took more from her mother’s people than his own. At sunset she had gone off with her new husband to spend her last night at Lake in the Clouds in the caves under the falls—something Nathaniel didn’t care to think about too closely.

“It was a lovely party, wasn’t it? I think Kitty would have approved.”

It was something she had repeated many times, mostly to convince herself, Nathaniel knew very well. He said, “I know she would have. When did she ever miss a chance to go dancing?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Very well, I will stop worrying about that, at least. But there’s still the matter of what to give Hannah.”

He yawned again. “You’ll have every one of them laden down like beasts of burden, Boots. She’s already talked Strong-Words into humping fifty pounds of books and medical supplies.”

“Well then, perhaps we should give them Toby.”

“That old horse wouldn’t last as far as Canajoharee,” Nathaniel said, and Elizabeth nodded in reluctant agreement.

“If only there was some money to give them. Are you not at all concerned about this? Sending her off with nothing at all?”

Nathaniel leaned against the pillows and covered his eyes with one arm for the simple reason that he was too tired to hide what he was thinking from her, and he had hoped to avoid the subject of money for a few days at least. He had yet to tell her about the recovered Tory gold.

Then she poked him hard and he sat up again.

“Nathaniel Bonner, you look as guilty as your son when he’s been raiding the maple sugar. And do not sigh as if I were beating you. I insist that you sit up now and explain yourself. Why did you make such a face when I said we had no money to give Hannah and Strikes-the-Sky?”

“Come and kiss me, Boots, and I’ll tell you.” He tugged on the sleeve of her nightdress and she pulled her arm away.

“Why must you always change the subject?”

“Because after I’m finished talking you may not want to kiss me for a good while.”

“Will you please explain yourself? It is far too late for such games, Nathaniel. Whatever it is that you want to say—”

“Boots.”

“Yes?”

“We can.”

“What do you mean, we can? We can give them Toby?”

“We can give them money,” said Nathaniel wearily. “To be exact, we can give them gold guineas, eight hundred of them if you’re feeling especially generous.”

He watched the color drain from her face and then come rushing back with growing understanding. She blinked at him.

“What?”

“You heard me. Gold guineas. The Tory gold.”

“The Tory gold?” Her voice spiraled and broke just as Nathaniel grabbed her and pinned her to the bed.

“Boots,” he whispered against her mouth. “Listen to me now before this gets out of hand. The gold’s back. Recovered. Found. As of yesterday. It’s not like I’ve been sitting on it for eight years.”

She stared into his eyes and he stared back. After a moment she blinked. “Came back? Walked in on little golden feet? Declared itself home again like so many prodigal sons?”

The corner of his mouth jerked in relief. “I thought you’d want to skin me alive. I don’t suppose you’ll ever stop surprising me.”

“But why should I be angry?” She pulled out of his grip and sat up. “What I am is curious, and mightily confused.”

He groaned. “That’s why I was hoping to save this conversation until tomorrow,” he said. “After I’ve had some sleep.”

“Most of all,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “Most of all I am relieved. I did so hate the idea of sending them off without any kind of gift.”

Nathaniel laughed, a full-bodied laugh tinged with a kind of gleeful desperation. “Good. Now can we go to sleep?”

“Certainly,” Elizabeth said. “Now that we have that problem settled. Of course there’s still the matter of Liam Kirby.”

He pulled her down next to him. “No,” he said firmly. “Not now. Not tomorrow. Maybe not ever.”

She was tense in his arms, every muscle vibrating. She would never be satisfied until she had worked out the mystery around Liam Kirby to her satisfaction, and that meant, Nathaniel admitted to himself, that she would simply never be satisfied. Liam was gone from Paradise and would not be back again, he felt that certainty in his gut.

Little by little she relaxed against him, tucked into the curve of his body. She wouldn’t stay that way for long; independent Elizabeth, she would turn away in her sleep, flinging off the blankets and the protection of his arms to conquer the night hours on her own terms. By morning she would be back again, her head bedded on his shoulder.

The familiar sounds of the summer night rose up as if she had called to them: crickets and falling water and the comfortable
creak of the timbers flexing like old bones. If he listened hard enough he could hear his children sleeping, the sound of their breathing and the very beats of their hearts. Two where last night there had been three. His daughter was gone from him now and still he could call her to him by closing his eyes. Hannah as a newborn, as a laughing three-year-old, as a solemn child of nine, as a young woman standing next to a man she now called her husband.

“Nathaniel?” Elizabeth whispered against his ear.

“Hmmmm?”

“He’ll take good care of her, and she of him.”

“Boots,” he said, running a hand up her arm to cup her face. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

Our Dearest Daughter Hannah,

It is six weeks since you left us on your journey west, and we trust that you have arrived safely. We send this parcel to the trading post at Fort Erie to be held for you there, as agreed, and hope that it finds you in good health and spirits upon your arrival on the Grand River. Included you will find letters from Scotland, from the Spencers, and from your friend Hakim Ibrahim. We have a letter, too, from the president’s secretary for you, something that caused great excitement in the village. Your father scruples to forward that particular letter to you while you are in Canada, for reasons that must be obvious in these unsettled times. Both your brother and sister write you letters of their own, a task they approach with great seriousness of purpose. I know this because Daniel inquired of me whether he must address you as “missus,” now that you are a married woman. I reminded him that you are, as you have always been and will always be, his beloved sister, and he was very relieved to hear it.

The twins miss you tremendously, as do we all, but every night we sit together and imagine you walking along with your grandfather in the lead and Jode bringing up the rear. You have started out your marriage with a ready-made squadron of boys to look after, but if anyone is equal to that task, it is you. Curiosity bids me tell you that you have her leave to take a strap to any of them as you see fit. Dr. Todd sends his best
greetings and reminds you that you are to keep careful records of the number of vaccinations you undertake as you move west.

The news from the village is plentiful and varied in nature. Many-Doves has decreed that we will start the corn harvest tomorrow, and that Lily must sing in your place. In response your sister noted, quite rightly, that every time we do something it is the first time we do it without you. To which Many-Doves replied that like all things, this would pass too.

I have visited with Nicholas Wilde and bought from him two saplings to plant on either side of my cherry tree, and hope that by the time you come home to visit you will have apples to make a cobbler for your husband.

We have had two weddings since your own. Dolly Smythe married Nicholas Wilde, as you will have guessed, and Becca Kaes, who did you such good service at the hearing in the church, married Charlie LeBlanc to help him raise poor Molly’s children, her nephews. This leaves the widows Kuick with no servants at all, and neither have they had any success in hiring any, which can come as no surprise.

What was a surprise to us all was this: two weeks ago Mr. Gathercole went to see the widow Kuick and brought with him a bag full of money, close to a thousand dollars in cash. His story, and we have no cause to doubt it, is that he found it on the church doorstep with an unsigned note, instructing him to use the money to buy the freedom of all the slaves in Paradise.

Whatever the widow might think of this cannot be said, as she has shown no recovery of her speech since her stroke and is quite unable to rouse herself. Jemima, on the other hand, let her displeasure be known in such a loud voice that Anna claims to have heard it at the trading post. Jemima’s position is that the money left on Mr. Gathercole’s doorstep is in fact her own money, from the stolen strongbox, and that she will not be fooled into believing otherwise. To his credit, Mr. Gathercole will not give in to her demands without some credible proof, which does not seem to be forthcoming. Jemima took her complaint to Mr. McGarrity as constable, but as you can perhaps imagine, he was not very sympathetic and suggested only that she might write to Judge O’Brien, as he would certainly be glad to hear from her again.

Your father, who sits with me at the table, reminds me of Curiosity’s position that if Jemima keeps on giving vent to her
emotions in such a way, her baby will have a disposition like a mule with botflies, which is to say, much like her own. I fear I am become quite cruel in my advancing years, and I must laugh as I read these lines out loud to myself. I wonder sometimes what is to become of Jemima.

It is your father’s belief that in the end she will indeed sell the slaves, not only because they need the money but also—and I must admit that this is true—because things do not go well for her at the mill, and the slaves seem quite content to let the business flounder. Charlie LeBlanc has offered to buy the millworks from the widow with the money her son left to Becca (another scandal of the highest order, of course), but Jemima says quite publicly that she’d sooner swallow the buhrstone. In the end that, too, may come to pass.

Because I know you will be wondering, I must report that there has been no word of or from Liam Kirby since he disappeared from the church that July night. To be truthful, I still do not know what to make of him. Sometimes it seems to me that his actions of those last weeks must have been calculated to purchase redemption for himself, or perhaps just some small measure of forgiveness for the role he played in the death of our mutual friend. Other times it seems that there was more to the story than we knew, or ever will know, unless you are someday able to get the entire tale from Manny. In any case I know not what to think, nor how to feel.

On a happier note, you should know that Ethan improves. Every day he is a little more himself and less weighed down by sorrow. Curiosity reports that Richard spends less time in his laboratory and more with the boy, and that they both seem the better for it. It seems to me that in the end Kitty did understand those she loved best in a way the rest of us do not, and never could.

I have not written yet in this long letter of your new husband, and in fact I find myself oddly unable to form any thoughts to put on paper that are not excessively sentimental. And so your father, who insists on leaving the writing of letters to me, will have the last word after all. He sends his love, and to Strikes-the-Sky this message: that he may endeavor to deserve you.