Author: Sara Donati
Category: Historical
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/sara-donati/page,5,44722-lake_in_the_clouds.html
“I was wondering about you,” said Elizabeth. She spoke Kahnyen’kehàka, except it came out with a strange rhythm and turned-around sentences, just the same way that Pines-Rustling spoke English. Only the children were truly comfortable in both languages, but in this cabin everyone spoke Mohawk. Many-Doves and Runs-from-Bears had chosen to raise their family away from the Kahnyen’kehàka longhouses where they had grown up, but Many-Doves only let as much of the O’seronni world in as she found necessary.
Lily rubbed her face against her mother’s shoulder, wiggling a little to make herself a more comfortable spot. “Sister sent me, she’s hungry for soup.”
Many-Doves smiled without looking up from her sewing. “The visitor must be out of danger if Walks-Ahead has time to take note of her own stomach.”
Elizabeth tucked a stray curl back into her daughter’s plait. “It is very good of you to look after your sister.”
Lily wiggled like a puppy, pleased with this picture of herself as Hannah’s caretaker. She had always been a serious child, self-contained and earnest even in her play, but since Robbie’s death she had turned even more inward. She was often at odds with the other children, arguing with her twin and her cousins and then going off to play by herself. Daniel mourned Robbie too, but still he rose every morning to fling himself out into the world. Since their youngest had gone from them, Lily was truly content only here on the mountain, with her family around her.
Too much like me. Elizabeth set her daughter on her feet and pushed herself up. “Let us take your sister her soup then.”
As soon as they were out of the door, Lily said in English, “What’s a bounty hunter?”
Elizabeth stopped. “Where did you hear that word?”
“Hannah wrote it in her daybook. That Selah Voyager fears bounty hunters.”
Her first impulse was to scold Lily for reading her sister’s daybook, but this was an old battle and one Elizabeth feared she would lose in the end. Lily intensely disliked sitting in the classroom, but she would read whatever came her way, regardless of warnings and repercussions.
“A bounty hunter is a man who hunts down criminals or escaped prisoners or slaves and returns them for a cash reward.”
The small mouth pursed thoughtfully. “Did a bounty hunter come after Curiosity and Galileo, or Joshua Hench, or Daisy?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “Curiosity and Galileo and Joshua did not run away from their owners. Each of them was bought out of slavery, and Daisy was born in freedom. They have manumission papers, you see, a legal document that declares the person in question is free.”
The small oval face went very still for a moment. “Do I have manumission papers too?”
She said this calmly, but Elizabeth saw the spark of real concern and fear in her daughter’s eyes. She sat down on the step and pulled Lily down next to her.
“You have no need of manumission papers. No one would question your freedom, Lily. You have nothing to fear from bounty hunters.”
“Or from kidnappers,” Lily prompted.
“Or from kidnappers,” Elizabeth echoed obediently, wishing again that the children weren’t always so eager to hear stories of what had happened to them when they were just a few months old.
“Everybody knows I’m free because I’m white,” Lily reasoned out loud. And then: “Well, then, why can’t we write a paper like that for Selah Voyager?”
Elizabeth pulled up in surprise. “That would be forgery, as if we decided to make our own paper money and claim it came from the government treasury. We don’t have the authority to write manumission papers for Selah, or anyone. The law would see that as theft.”
“But if one person can’t belong to another person, how can that be thievery? You can’t steal something nobody owns.”
It happened with increasing frequency that Elizabeth was taken aback and delighted by the clarity of eight-year-old logic. Now it took her a moment to collect a reasonable response, but Lily waited patiently.
“The problem is that somebody claims to own Selah Voyager,” she said finally. “And the law supports that claim.”
“Grandfather says that laws are only as good as the men who write them,” said Lily. And then she leapt off the porch in a manner much more suited to her age, and let out a high hoot of laughter.
“Oh, look, Uncle got some turkeys!”
Runs-from-Bears stood at the edge of the woods with a pair of birds slung over one shoulder and a brace of rabbits over the other. With the flick of a wrist he tossed the rabbits to Hector and Blue, who grabbed up their reward and galloped away to eat under the fir tree that was their favorite spot. The dogs passed Lily as she ran toward Runs-from-Bears, her bare heels flashing white as they kicked up her petticoat to show the muddy hem of her shift.
She launched herself fearlessly, grabbing onto his free forearm. He swung her up and for one breathless moment Lily seemed to hang like a hummingbird in midair; then he caught her neatly and she came to rest on his raised forearm. Elizabeth had seen this trick too many times to count, but it still struck her as incongruous: her tiny daughter perched so nonchalantly on the arm of a Kahnyen’kehàka warrior. A stranger would have first seen his size, the weapons he carried, the face mangled by battle and pox scars and decorated with elaborate bear-claw tattoos; Elizabeth saw a man who had taught her to snare and skin a rabbit, how to walk quietly in the endless forests, how to greet an elder in Mohawk without giving offense, and too many other things to count. Runs-from-Bears had helped her through some of the most difficult times of her life; when she looked at him she saw a friend, and so did her daughter.
Lily was talking so fast and so earnestly that by the time Elizabeth caught up, Runs-from-Bears had heard all the news of the day.
“Will you come and meet Selah Voyager, Uncle?”
“I will,” said Runs-from-Bears. “When she is well again.”
Elizabeth said, “Run ahead now and bring your sister this soup, she is waiting for you.”
Lily swung down as she would have done from the branch of a tree, landing lightly. When she had accepted the covered bowl, Runs-from-Bears reached into his hunting shirt and took out a letter.
“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 n
ot 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, e
mbroidered 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.