Author: Sara Donati
Category: Historical
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“I haven’t asked her yet,” said Jemima, reaching for her cloak.
“Don’t count on it,” said Cookie from the worktable where she was washing the morning’s crockery. “The widow ain’t in a generous mood these days.”
Jemima desperately wanted to contradict Cookie, but she could not: the widow’s mood was as bad as it had ever been. It was always thus in the week before the overseer brought the slaves home after a winter’s work in the city, when the widow’s mind turned to the season’s profits. If the money he brought to her met or exceeded her expectations there would be extra servings of mutton for a week, and the widow would be at her most approachable. If there was less money than she felt was her due, life would be unbearable for a very long time. In either case, she would still send Reuben to play the fiddle at the wedding party. There was hard coin to be collected for his services, after all.
“I told Eulalia I’d be there,” said Dolly softly, turning to Becca.
Jemima’s temper, so long held tight to her breast, flared. “Eulalia, is it? You could care less about Eulalia Wilde. It’s her brother Nicholas you’re interested in, hoping that he’ll ask you to dance. Everybody knows it, Dolly Smythe. Him too. No doubt he’s laughing about it right now.”
The tears that sprang into Dolly’s crossed eyes gave Jemima little satisfaction. She jerked open the door, but Becca put a foot out to stop her.
She said, “You’re the meanest thing God ever put breath into.”
“Maybe so,” said Jemima. “But you’re the dullest and she’s the ugliest.”
From behind them Cookie called, “Come on back here, let me tell you what folks saying about you, Miss High-and-Mighty!”
“Yes,” hissed Becca. “We all know who you want to dance with, don’t we?”
Jemima walked away so quickly that she almost lost her footing. When she was out of sight she stopped, and pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes until they ached.
She would go to the wedding party. She must go. Richard Todd had given Anna and Jed permission to use the judge’s old homestead, and Reuben was going to play the fiddle. Everyone in the village would be there. For the last week Jemima had thought of nothing else; she knew exactly how it would be, down to the things she would say to each individual, and the way people would look at her. Over the winter she had spent all her free time taking apart the one good dress her mother had owned, sea green with a pattern of yellow and red flowers, and sewing it together again into something more like the dresses she had seen Elizabeth Bonner’s cousin Amanda wearing when she came to visit two years ago. It was low enough in the bosom to give the widow apoplexy, if she were to see it.
Jemima would dance with Isaiah Kuick, and with Liam Kirby too, married or not. And Hannah Bonner would watch.
Except that Liam had come back from Johnstown and disappeared into the endless forests, tracking his runaway.
The skies poured down, and Jemima wrapped her cloak tighter around herself.
Jed McGarrity woke on the morning of his wedding to Anna Hauptmann with a sore jaw. A man might grin through a toothache—he had been doing just that for weeks—but there was no hiding a cheek that looked as if it had been stuffed to bursting with chestnuts. An hour after he ducked his head in the trading-post door, Jed found himself trapped.
To his right side was his bride, looking as ferocious as he had ever seen her; to his left was her father, with a bottle of his homemade schnapps at the ready; and in front of him was Hannah Bonner with an instrument in her hand that gave Jed a bad feeling deep in his gut. It was long and thin and it had jaws with teeth, as sharp as a wolverine’s.
“That one of them instruments from the medicine case that Hakim fellow give you?” he asked, hoping to distract her for at least a minute.
She gave him a tight smile. “It is. Open up.”
He took one last hopeful glance at the door, but there was little chance of rescue. Anna had closed the trading post in honor of their wedding day.
“The quicker we start the quicker it will be over,” said Hannah. It always took him by surprise, how gentle Hannah could turn so hard and no-nonsense when she was doctoring.
“Come on, Jed,” said Anna. “I ain’t never seen you turn coward and today sure ain’t the day to start. You’ll be running off, leaving me standing by my lonesome in front of Mr. Gathercole, and wouldn’t that be a sight.”
He opened his mouth to tell her that he would never do such a thing, and Hannah reached right in, as if the two women had planned the whole thing out beforehand. Which of course he wouldn’t put past them. Though it did bother him to be so easily got around.
In two yanks she had it. Anna leaned forward to take a closer look.
“More like an old moldy piece of honeycomb than a tooth,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you not to leave it so long?”
Jed winked at her sheepishly and spat into the bowl she held out for him. “Should have listened, Annie. Won’t make that mistake again.”
She snorted out a laugh, but she was smiling.
“Take a swallow of my schnapps,” said Axel, thrusting the bottle toward Jed. “It won’t stop it hurting none, but you won’t care so much either.”
“Don’t start pouring yet,” said Hannah. “There’s still some work to be done here.”
Jed spat again. “Feels fine to me,” he said. “Feels good, as a matter of fact. Like the devil finally left off hammering on the inside of my jaw.”
“It won’t feel good for long if I don’t open the gum,” she said. “All that poison has to come out.”
Jed didn’t like the sound of that, but when he started to explain his position she just slipped three fingers in right up to the knuckles. Her head was turned away, as if she was listening to somebody talking in the next room. Then something hard scraped against a tooth and pressed into the swollen tissue. A roar came up from his belly and it was all he could do to keep from biting down.
“There,” she said, wiping the little blade she had been holding between her fingers on the sacking Anna had draped around his shoulders and neck. “Spit it all out. It should drain for a while. You need to rinse your mouth every half hour.”
“Schnapps?” Axel looked up at her hopefully.
“Warm salt water,” said Hannah. “Save the schnapps for the wedding party. I’ll come back later today and pack the hole to stop the bleeding.”
There was a knocking at the door, but Anna ignored it. “We stand up in front of Mr. Gathercole at five,” she said, a little anxiously. “Can you do it before then?”
Hannah hesitated. She had hoped to stay away from the village this afternoon, but all three of them were looking at her with such open and friendly expressions that all the excuses she had rehearsed suddenly faded away.
“Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
The knocking at the door started again, louder now and impatient. Anna’s face screwed itself up in exasperation and she thrust the bowl into Jed’s hands.
“You’d think I could close this place for one day,” she said loud enough to be heard on the other side of the door as she marched toward it. “Hung a sign out too, plain as a pimple on your nose.”
She swung up the bar and threw the door open.
Five men stood on the porch dripping rain. The bigger four were all black men, heads and shoulders tented with oiled deerskins held in place by woven carry bands slung around huge packs. The shortest of the four stood six feet tall, and even he was twice as broad as the white man who had knocked on the door. Long and thin, there was little to see of Ambrose Dye from the depths of his boiled-wool cloak.
“Mr. Dye,” said Anna, booming out her surprise. “Don’t think the widow expected you back till tomorrow, but here you are on my doorstep sure as rain. Ezekiel, Levi, Shadrach, Malachi, good to see you boys back safe. Zeke, looks to me like you’ve grown another five inches this winter. I expect Cookie won’t be taking that wooden spoon of hers to your britches no more.”
The
youngest of the men smiled and ducked his head. “Ma will whoop me when she feel the need,” he said. “No matter how big I get.”
“Now, Zeke,” said Anna. “I’m especially glad to see you. Your brother Reuben’s set to play his fiddle at our wedding party tonight. I’m hoping you’ll come along too. We’d like to have two fiddles, wouldn’t we, Jed?”
Jed allowed that if he couldn’t play fiddle himself, he would like to have Zeke and Reuben making the music. “If the widow can spare you,” he added, with a glance toward her overseer. “For the usual fee, of course.”
Anna stepped back to open the door wider. “Won’t you step in and dry yourselves in front of my new stove?”
“Hauled it in from Albany just after the first snow,” called Axel. “Come and set, give us the news from Johnstown.”
But now Ambrose Dye had caught sight of Hannah; she could tell by the way he straightened and then looked away. “We ain’t that wet,” he said. “Just stopped by for some tobacco on my way up to the mill.”
Anna followed his gaze to the table where Hannah was packing up her tools, and her friendly expression went just as suddenly as it had come.
“Suit yourself,” she said, and shut the door in his face with a bang. “No more manners than a goat,” she muttered, reaching over the counter for the tobacco scoop. “Letting those boys stand out there in the rain because he don’t—” She stopped, glanced at Hannah uneasily. “And here’s me thinking I’d invite him to the party. I’ve got a mind to have a word with the widow Kuick about that overseer of hers.”
“Never mind, Annie,” said Jed. “Give the man his tobacco and he’ll be on his way.”
But she was waiting for Hannah to say something about Ambrose Dye, who would rather stand in the rain than step into the same room with her. He would chase her away if he could, out of the trading post and the village and off the face of the earth, no doubt. Anger made her throat go so tight that her own voice sounded strange in her ears. She said, “I haven’t heard Reuben and Zeke play together for a year or more, Anna. I’m looking forward to it.”
If they had asked her straight-out to come, she could have listed a hundred reasons to spend this evening at Lake in the Clouds, but suddenly none of them mattered. Hannah would be going to the wedding party. Not because Anna and Jed wanted her there, but because Ambrose Dye would want her to stay away.
Elizabeth went down to school in spite of the fact that she had canceled classes in honor of Anna Hauptmann’s wedding. There was other work to be done, lessons to be planned and two books that needed mending, and in any case, she liked having the schoolhouse to herself now and then.
When the children were absent, Elizabeth could see the cabin for what it used to be: her father’s first homestead, built when he was still a leaseholder. Four years later he had brought her mother here as a bride, and here they had stayed until a bigger house was built on the lake. In the quiet of a rainy spring morning Elizabeth could almost imagine her mother sitting in front of the hearth with her needlework in her lap. Mattie Clarke had been disowned by the Quaker meeting where she grew up when she married outside the faith, but she had never put aside her plain ways. It was her habit and comfort to sit in silence, something Elizabeth had learned from her.
“Hope I ain’t interrupting.” Curiosity came in, pulling Elizabeth out of her daydreams. She set down her basket by the door.
“Not at all,” said Elizabeth. “Are you on your way home?”
Curiosity pushed back her hood and ran her hands over her face. “I am. Lily say to tell you to hurry, she cain’t find her blue hair ribbon. Those children are surely looking forward to this party. Smiles to brighten up the worst day wherever you look.”
Elizabeth studied Curiosity’s face. “Have you had a bad day? Is Selah—?”
“Oh no.” Curiosity sat down across from Elizabeth on one of the student benches. “Doing right well, as a matter of fact. Can we set a minute and talk, you and me? Seem like we just cain’t find the time these days.”
“What is it?” Elizabeth asked. “What’s wrong?”
Curiosity wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked forward. “The girl has got to move on. No help for it, with Liam nosing around the mountain. But I hate to do it. Don’t like the idea of her out there in the bush, so far from family. And I keep asking myself about Manny, if he’ll ever see this child of his.”
“Of course he will,” said Elizabeth firmly. “Of course. And so will you. Later in the summer she will go on to Montreal and he will join them there.”
“It won’t be easy for him to leave his work behind.”
For a moment Elizabeth thought of Manny at the African Free School, and then she realized what Curiosity was trying to say.
“The voyagers.”
Curiosity nodded. “I expect he feeling mighty torn right now.”
“But you must be—” Elizabeth stopped herself.
“Relieved. I surely am, I cain’t deny it. We never do talk about it, but many the night me and Leo have laid awake thinking about him getting caught. He’d hang before we could get there to say a prayer for him. So I’m relieved, yes. And I’m feeling guilty too. All those souls needing a hand on the way.” She shook her head and pushed out a great sigh. “I expect you know that I’m here to ask you for something. Except it ain’t easy.”
“Anything,” Elizabeth said. “You know that.”
“Wait till you hear it,” said Curiosity. “Afore you go jumping in with that yes.” She paused. “Hawkeye all ready to set out north for Little Lost?”
Elizabeth nodded. “He is.”
“If I had my way I’d go with them”—she held up a hand to keep Elizabeth from interrupting—“but I cain’t. I move too slow, and anyway, it would be as good as waving a flag if I was to disappear like that. It’ll be work enough keeping clear of Liam once he picks up the scent.”
“It will not,” Elizabeth said firmly. “There are very few men who could track Hawkeye in the bush, and Liam is not one of them, as you know well enough.”
Curiosity said, “What I know is, her time is close. Too close, maybe.”
They were silent for a moment together.
“She really is in good hands,” Elizabeth said, but with less conviction. She had great faith in her father-in-law, but she could hardly imagine him delivering a baby. “If Richard hadn’t arranged for Hannah to go with Kitty …” She said this more to herself than Curiosity, and did not finish what they both knew.
Curiosity rocked forward again, her expression so tense that Elizabeth imagined she could see the pulse in her throat, just as she could feel her own heartbeat quicken. She knew now what Curiosity had come to ask, but she must wait to hear the words.
“But you could go, Elizabeth, if you had a mind to.”
Elizabeth drew in a breath and let it out again. “It’s been almost ten years since I last went into the bush. Those were desperate times.”
Curiosity’s wide-set eyes, so clear and dark, met Elizabeth’s evenly. “Desperate times,” she said softly. “They got a way of coming round again when you ain’t looking.”
Elizabeth got up to go to the window. So many trees, as far as a man could walk in a month or more, trees without end. Curiosity was asking her to go into the endless forests with Selah Voyager, to see her safely to the people who would take her in, people like herself, other runaways who had found safety together deep in the bush. On his own Hawkeye could get to the meeting place at Little Lost in two days walking as hard as he could, but with Selah the journey would take four days or five. More, if the child decided to come early.
She wanted to say no. There were so many reasons to stay on the mountain, with her own children. But then Curiosity had once left her family behind to go with Elizabeth on a much longer and more dangerous journey. Curiosity had helped her bring Robbie into the world, and she had been there, too, when he left it. She had taken him out of her arms at the end, and tended to him as if he was her own. It was Curio
sity who had brought them through those dark days.
Desperate times got a way of coming round again when you ain’t looking.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Of course I will go with her.”
Curiosity closed her eyes briefly and opened them again, but before she could speak, Elizabeth had started to talk again.
“I imagine you’ve already figured out what I should do about the school?”
Curiosity smiled. “As a matter of fact, why yes. Seem to me that the urge to go down to the city with Kitty and Hannah going to come over you right sudden. They planning to set out at first light on Monday—won’t nobody know if you went north or south, not until they back home again.”
“That is a very delicate operation you’re proposing.” Elizabeth thought for a long moment. “But it might well work. It is believable, at any rate, that Kitty might persuade me at the last minute. What about Richard?”
“You leave Richard to me,” said Curiosity.
“Gladly. The twins will be unhappy about this, of course.” She looked out the window, as if she hoped to catch sight of them. “There’s something I need from you.”
“You know you don’t have to ask me to look after those children,” said Curiosity.
Elizabeth smiled. “I do know that. With you and Many-Doves and Hawkeye they will do very well.”
She looked out the window again and remembered Daniel climbing through it, set on rescuing them all. How sure he was of himself, how completely dedicated to the task he had set himself. Her sweet son, at ease in the world in a way she had never been, might never be. He had that from his father, and from his grandfather.
“It isn’t so much the twins I’m worried about as Nathaniel. He would take any risk upon himself, you know that. But he won’t like the idea of me taking this on. You’ll have to help me convince him.”
Curiosity had a warming smile, and she used it now. “Why, Elizabeth, I’m surprised at you. Married all this time and you cain’t think how to get what you want. That ain’t no mystery at all.”