by Sara Donati
She drew in her breath audibly, her head falling back and all the harshness, all the anger, draining out of her face to be replaced by the drowsy and infinite pleasure of this, of hearing him say he wanted her. And Nathaniel saw something he had forgotten about women: that words can do the same work as hands and mouths and a man’s body, that she was as undone by his admission of desire as she had been by his kiss.
“And the other part?” Elizabeth asked, her voice wobbling.
Nathaniel grinned. “Pretty women ain’t so very rare,” he said. “But a pretty woman who stands up to a room full of strange men and defends herself—that’s something else. After all,” he said softly. “ ‘Blessed are those wise in the ways of books, for theirs is the kingdom of righteousness and fair play.’ ”
Elizabeth’s head snapped forward. “So you want me because I misquote the Bible to serve my own purposes?” she asked. “That’s not very convincing. Nor, may I add, is it very gentlemanly to remind me of that episode.”
“Aye,” said Nathaniel. “Here we are at the heart of it. I ain’t a gentleman, but you don’t want a gentleman, do you? You want somebody as set on their sights as you are, and willing to do what has to be done, and damn the consequences.”
“Let me ask you this,” Elizabeth said. “Will you let your daughter come to my school?”
Nathaniel laughed out loud. “That’s what I mean. Well, tell me this: can I pay her tuition in kisses?” he asked, but Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed and he saw his mistake. His face calmed.
“I can’t let her come. I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”
“I see.” She turned and began to walk away, wobbling on her snowshoes.
“You don’t see.” Nathaniel came up next to her.
“I see that you want to put your hands on me and kiss me but that I’m not good enough to teach your daughter. I see that you admire my courage but that you don’t value my convictions.”
They walked for a moment in silence. “You don’t understand about Hannah.”
She swung around, and almost lost her balance, but caught herself quickly. “I understand you have a daughter whom you don’t want to send to a school taught by a white woman.”
A little shocked at herself, Elizabeth hesitated. She had let the words fall, though, and there was no calling them back.
“Is that what you think?” Nathaniel asked quietly. “That I don’t trust you to treat her well, or teach her things of value? I don’t want her in your school because you’re white, and she’s not?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, well, that is my impression.”
When they had gone on another ten minutes, they came to another bit of woods and they passed into it, and within a few feet they came to a small cabin.
“Come,” Nathaniel said, and turned off the path. Elizabeth hesitated behind him, and then seeing him at the open door, and knowing that he would not concede, she stripped off her snowshoes and went in.
The cabin was a single room with a chair, a cot, a table, and a hearth. There was a lopsided betty lamp on the mantel, covered with dust. Nathaniel took a flint and steel from a pouch on his belt and set to the chore of laying a fire.
“We won’t be here long enough to need that,” Elizabeth said behind his back. She stood as far away from the cot as she could, with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. “Tell me what it is you want to tell me about Hannah and we’ll be on our way. There’s that storm coming, and I can’t be caught here with you, alone.”
Nathaniel went on with his work as if he had not heard her, coaxing the small and reluctant flame into something more substantial.
“Come over here and warm yourself,” he said finally. “I promise not to touch you.”
Elizabeth snorted. “We’re talking about Hannah, and school,” she said. “We’ll talk about … kissing if and when we come to an agreement.” She looked straight at him as she said this, although she could not control the color rising on her cheeks.
“Do you mean to blackmail me into sending my daughter to your school by withholding yourself from me?” asked Nathaniel, amused.
Elizabeth crossed the room with sharp taps of her boots, and held her hands out to the fire. “I’ll not honor that with a reply,” she said. “You know very well that’s not what I meant.”
There was a little pause as she collected her thoughts. “Your father was telling me yesterday that your mother was educated, and that her father thought it was right for girls to have schooling”
“True enough. My mother was well schooled, and she taught all of us.”
“Well, then, your mother is no longer alive to teach your daughter, but I have things to offer her.”
“I ain’t disputing that, Boots.”
“But you won’t let her come.”
“No.”
She turned to him. “Why not?”
“Not because I fear what you’d teach her,” Nathaniel said. “But because I’m afraid for her life.”
Elizabeth’s mouth fell open, and she stood there for a good long time just like that.
“You think … she’s in danger?”
“I know she is,” said Nathaniel. “We all are. Some in the village do fear us, and fear moves stupid men to recklessness.”
“These are just children,” protested Elizabeth.
“Oh, children ain’t capable of meanness?” His tone bordered on bitterness. “Liam Kirby is coming, ain’t he, and Peter Dubonnet and Praise-Be Cunningham, and maybe Jemima Southern?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Well, now. There’s a whole world of hurt and trouble in those names. Those are the children of the men who most probably broke in, last November. The men who would be glad to see us starve. The ones who killed livestock they couldn’t carry with them just for the pleasure of it. They make no bones in public about wanting us gone off the judge’s lands, and they ain’t about to lose any sleep over a little half-breed girl. Especially not now.”
“Not now?”
“Now that folks know about us wanting to buy Hidden Wolf.” He paused. “They think the whole Kahnyen’kehàka nation is going to move in on them. And it don’t help much that Falling-Day is Wolf clan—when they think of the Kahnyen’kehàka of the Wolf they think of warriors who fight like lions, and move quick as birds: gone with your scalp before you got a good look at them.”
Sarah’s clan, thought Elizabeth. Her fingers were tingling as they warmed, and she rubbed her hands together.
“Is there any reason to fear the Wolf clan?” Elizabeth asked in an even tone.
There was something like regret on Nathaniel’s face. “There ain’t a hundred Kahnyen’kehàka men of fighting age left in all of the territory,” he said. “Most of them went to Canada and won’t ever come back. There’s only a few who tried to stay out of the war. And most of them have been beaten into the dust by liquor and humiliation.”
Nathaniel’s irritation and anger were suddenly deflated. Elizabeth wanted to ask a hundred questions, but she sensed that he had gone far beyond the things he had meant to say, and that the things he needed from her now were different.
“Well,” she said simply. “I apologize for my outburst.”
“As well you should,” said Nathaniel, a bit calmer.
The fire crackled for a while without their talking.
“What about a trial?” Elizabeth asked. “To see if there is as much trouble as you anticipate?”
Exasperated, Nathaniel ran a hand through his hair. “You are stubborn, I’ll say that for you.”
“Now I’m stubborn,” said Elizabeth, trying to smile. “Just a little while ago you were admiring my … persistence.”
“We could talk about what I admire about you,” Nathaniel said softly, but with such a focused look that Elizabeth stepped back.
“Your daughter wants to come to my school.”
Nathaniel’s look cleared. “She’d have to go down to the village every day on her own.”
Elizabeth nodded. “That is true
. But she came down yesterday to fetch me.”
“Good God,” replied Nathaniel. “I don’t know what to do with you. Listen, now. If Hannah comes to your school she’d be traveling the same paths every day at the same times. Does that say anything to you at all? Can’t you see what trouble that might be?”
“Oh,” Elizabeth said. “You’re afraid somebody might—lie in wait for her?”
The dim light in the cabin came from a window facing the path where a shutter had broken; Elizabeth looked about, realizing they were at an impasse and wondering where to go from here.
“Whose place is this?”
“Your father’s.”
She turned to him, her head inclined.
“Didn’t they tell you? This was his first homestead on the patent. My father helped him build it.”
All of her uneasiness forgotten, Elizabeth looked around herself with new amazement. “Then my mother must have lived here.”
“She did,” said Nathaniel. “Until the judge built the house down by the lake. The one that burned and had to be rebuilt.”
Here was another story that Elizabeth had never heard, but her curiosity was pushed aside by a sudden awareness of the opportunity before her. She clapped her hands together suddenly in delight. Nathaniel looked up from the fire, startled.
“I could teach school right here! Until the new school is ready. It’s not very big, but there’s enough room if we economize carefully with the benches. There’s a hearth that works, and—” She looked out the window. “A privy? No. Well, that could be managed without too much trouble, could it not?”
Nathaniel was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, smiling and shaking his head.
“It’s a good solution,” insisted Elizabeth, as though he had disagreed. “And best of all, Hannah would be closer to home.”
Before Nathaniel could object, Elizabeth’s face lit up one more degree.
“I’ve got the feeling you’ve had another idea,” he said dryly.
“Many-Doves,” Elizabeth said.
“Many-Doves needs no schooling.”
“No, but she could help me teach. And Hannah wouldn’t be alone, coming and going.”
Elizabeth began to pace the room again, looking at it more closely. “We need tables, but that’s not hard, is it?” She whirled suddenly to find Nathaniel directly before her. Wound up in her new plans, she forgot to be nervous of him; presented with the possibility of her school opening very soon, she forgot, just for the moment, about kissing Nathaniel.
“Don’t say no,” she said. “Please, not right away. Think about it. It would be right to have her here. Little girls are kept away from the things that would make them strong, in the name of protection and propriety.” She paused. “I came here hoping to change that, at least for one small place. Don’t stop me before I’ve started, please, Nathaniel.”
He nodded. “I promise to think about it.”
Elizabeth’s face, bright with excitement, suddenly shifted: her eyes drifted down to his mouth, and she looked away.
“Nathaniel.” She raised her head and focused all her attention on him. “What began between us—out there. It is not a good idea.”
“You’re lying,” he responded in a congenial tone, but his eyes were glittering, a feral gleaming. “You think it a very good idea.”
Flustered, Elizabeth tried to draw her thoughts together. “I don’t know what you want of me.”
“You do know,” he said calmly. “You know very well what I want of you. What you don’t know is what you want of me.”
Elizabeth stood shaken by the truth of it, unable at first to look at him. She could acknowledge that he was right and risk the discussion that would follow, or she could lie to him. She could force herself to meet his gaze; with enough willpower, she could steel her heart against him and tell him she knew what she wanted, and that it was not him. But it would be a lie, and she could not bear to lie to him. He deserved the truth, and she could give him no less. Elizabeth swallowed hard, and found that for once in her life words had deserted her.
“Don’t tie yourself in knots,” he said gently, and she flinched at this, at how easily he could read her thoughts and moods. He leaned toward her, touching her with nothing but his words. “I won’t put a hand on you ever again unless you ask me to,” he said. “But know this, Elizabeth. You will get what you ask for. So think hard about it first.”
He opened the door and went out of the cabin ahead of her.
When Elizabeth emerged a few minutes later, Nathaniel was busy strapping on his snowshoes with economical and quick movements.
“I said more than I meant to,” he said, gesturing for her boot so he could strap on her shoes. “I have to ask you not to talk about the thievery at Lake in the Clouds to anybody at all.” For once when he looked at her, he was unguarded and she saw the full force of the rage generated by the threat to his home and family. The hope came to Elizabeth, in passing, never to see such fury directed toward herself.
They were coming down through the last wooded section before the outermost clearings when Nathaniel pulled up short and gestured to Elizabeth to be still. There was a crackling from the path ahead, and then Richard Todd came around the corner, with Billy Kirby just behind him. They were talking in low tones when Billy saw Nathaniel and stopped.
“Hail!” called Richard, looking up. “Hail, Elizabeth! G’d day, Nathaniel.”
Nathaniel nodded. “You two out for a walk in the snow?”
“Another storm coming,” said Billy. “We can see her home from here.”
Elizabeth looked at Nathaniel and thought how strange it was that his face, so animated when he spoke to her, so capable of showing his feelings, could show nothing at all when he wished it, when he needed it so. He might look at me like that someday, she thought. And Elizabeth was stunned to find out something about herself, to recognize what she feared most of all: not Nathaniel’s passion, or his anger, but his indifference. That he might take her at her word and believe the foolish things she had said to him in the cabin. It’s not a good idea. Suddenly Elizabeth wished Richard Todd and Billy Kirby far away; if she could just talk to Nathaniel by herself, if she could just touch him, she thought, at this moment she could say things to him she had once—even this very day—thought herself incapable of.
He was turning toward her. She imagined a flicker at the corner of his eye.
“I’ll say my farewells, then,” he said. “Elizabeth, I’ll be by in the next week or so, if you want to come along and see the foundations of the school. Weather permitting.”
Richard was watching her closely over Nathaniel’s shoulder.
“Yes, that would be very good. Thank you for your help, Nathaniel. And—you’ll think about Hannah, won’t you?”
“I’ll do that. And do mark, if you’ve got a yearning for apples, you only need to ask.”
Richard and Billy could not see Nathaniel’s expression, but Elizabeth could, and she struggled not to let her face respond in kind.
With a murmur of thanks and farewell she brushed past Nathaniel and joined Richard Todd and Billy Kirby. When Elizabeth looked back, Nathaniel was already lost in the forest.
“Did the old woman make a crumble?” asked Billy.
She turned to him. “What?”
“Did Hawkeye’s squaw make apple crumble?” he asked. “I’m mighty fond of it myself.”
“No,” said Elizabeth, taken by surprise and trying not to show it. Hawkeye’s squaw. “They called it apple grunt.”
“Ah, then,” said Billy. As if he understood completely.
XI
Elizabeth was surprised to see her father waiting for her at the door when she came up with Richard Todd. The judge had been pacing the hall and watching out the window, and was out the front door to meet them before Elizabeth could get the borrowed snowshoes off and thank Richard for his help. With a calculating look at the judge’s expression, Richard took his leave of them.
“I�
��m very sorry,” Elizabeth said, when her father had made his displeasure known. “I had no idea you’d be so worried about my welfare. But there was no opportunity to send you word.”
The judge stopped his pacing and turned his great head to look at her, incredulous. “It’s not your welfare that worried me,” he said. “I would hope that you yourself would see that it is your reputation at stake.”
“I see,” she said shortly, moving past him to dry the wet hem of her skirt before the fire. “You would rather I had gotten lost in the blizzard and perished than have the village gossip.”
“If you hadn’t gone up the mountain in the first place,” her father said in clipped tones, “this dilemma would not have confronted you, and you would have been home, where you belong.”
Elizabeth swirled to meet her father. All the force of her morning’s outing, all the emotion she had brought to Nathaniel, were close to the surface, and now they took another turn.
“I do not belong at home!” she said, struggling to maintain an even tone, and failing.
“The Bonners are good men,” the judge said. “Chingachgook is as fine an Indian as ever lived.” He stopped, more unsure of himself now. “But they are not suitable company for a young unmarried woman of good family.”
“Why? Why exactly, Father?” Elizabeth watched her father squirm and redden. “What you are thinking but will not say is that they are the wrong color. That I should be spending my time with that insipid Katherine Witherspoon and Richard Todd, people of my own kind.”
The judge’s color rose another notch. “And I would have told you so, if you had bothered to ask me before running off to Lake in the Clouds!”
It was rare that Elizabeth truly lost her temper, but she felt all the blood in her body congregate in her hands, her fingers jerking with the need to pick up something and throw it. “Shall I infer from this that I may not accept an invitation without your approval?”
“You will ask my approval,” her father said tightly, “or I’ll lock you in your room!”
Elizabeth drew up to her full height. An awful calm came over her, and the room was silent but for the sound of the fire and her father’s hoarse breathing.
