by Sara Donati
“I never realized you were so ambitious.”
“It comes from marrying into money.”
He grunted, and picked up his rifle to hook the sling over his shoulder. “Let’s go on then and put it behind us.”
“You are going armed to an evening party?”
“I’m going nowhere without Deerkiller, Boots. You’ll have to put up with both of us barbarians at the table.” One brow went up in a sharply defiant angle, and Elizabeth realized suddenly that Nathaniel truly dreaded what was before them.
Among the odds and ends on the dresser, she caught sight of the eagle feather which he normally wore in his hair. Elizabeth reached up on tiptoe and quickly knotted it into the simple black band that bound the long queue at the nape of his neck.
Nathaniel looked at himself in the mirror and rewarded her with a wolfish grin.
· · ·
Elizabeth was relieved to find that the party of jurists and merchants she had anticipated was not to materialize. Instead she found herself in the company of a small group of French immigrants, aristocrats fleeing the fury of the mob that had taken over in France. Simon Desjardins and Pierre Pharoux were on their way to found a settlement on the western frontier. Her first impulse was to sit down with these Frenchmen and hear directly about the revolution in their homeland, but an introduction to Judge van der Poole’s last guest put this out of her mind completely.
Mr. Samuel Hench was presented to her as a Baltimore printer on business in Albany. He had delivered a number of volumes to the judge, and been asked to stay to dinner. By the quality of his dress Elizabeth saw that he was very wealthy, and by its plainness, that he was Quaker. He was a large man, broad in the shoulder, with sharp features at odds with the mild expression of his blue eyes. Above a high forehead his hair was iron-gray.
“Mrs. Bonner,” he murmured. “Mr. Bonner. Fate has brought us together this evening, for otherwise I would have come to look for thee. Or I should say, I would have been looking for a Miss Middleton, formerly of Oakmere.”
Elizabeth could see the watchful tension in Nathaniel’s face, and so she spoke for them both. “And why is that, Mr. Hench?”
“Because it would be remiss of me to be in this part of the world and not pay my respects to Caroline Middleton’s daughter.”
“You knew my mother?” Elizabeth smiled with relief.
He bowed briefly. “I knew her as Caroline Clarke, before her marriage to thy father. Her mother—your grandmother—was my aunt Mathilde, my mother’s sister.”
Nathaniel found himself between the Frenchmen. They had so many stories about their adventures to date, and so many questions about the western frontier that van der Poole’s good food grew cold on his plate. Listening to the plans they laid out for him in detail, plans which were both daring and wildly under-informed to the point of recklessness, Nathaniel grew both alarmed and annoyed. But they were sincere and they saw the things around them for what they were rather than for the price they might fetch. He would have liked them, under other circumstances, so Nathaniel fought the impulse to give them the whole truth in one lump and watch them choke on it. In another setting, with other company, he would have told them the worst of what they would face, from impassable rivers to the Seneca, who would not stand idly by and watch their hunting grounds divided up among yet more O’seronni.
Far down the table on its other side, Elizabeth was deep in conversation with Samuel Hench. She had that concentrated look about her, the one that came over her when she was reading, or listening to Hannah. Nathaniel took another forkful of bass and onion pie, trying at the same time to turn his attention to the story he was being told of the Frenchmen’s cold reception in Philadelphia.
“Your secretary of state did not even offer us seats when we came to call on him. He was openly hostile to our plans to bring our families and colleagues here from France.”
Mr. Bennett had been following the conversation without taking part, but now he put down his glass with a small thump.
“Pardon me, gentlemen, but I do find that hard to credit. Mr. Jefferson has spent a great deal of time in France, after all. If his patience is short right now with you or your countrymen, it will have to do with the fact that your Minister Genet has been outfitting privateers to attack the British Navy in our waters. But Mr. Jefferson’s love of things French is legendary.”
Pharoux was not going to back down. “I had great hopes of him for exactly that reason,” he said. “You see, I am an architect and an engineer, monsieur. I hoped that he and I would have some common ground on which to build an understanding. But it seems we are not the right sort of Frenchmen. We are on the wrong side of the revolution, and do not deserve to keep our heads.”
His voice had not risen, but his emotion caught Elizabeth’s attention.
“I for one am glad that you have kept your heads,” she said. “And I see no reason that you should not make a home here for yourselves. But I am an immigrant myself, of course. It is easy to be generous with that which one does not possess.” She hesitated, and Nathaniel knew she was wondering who might now be living on those lands these men had so easily claimed for their own.
Desjardins raised a hand in a conciliatory gesture. “Madame, I beg you to excuse my colleague’s temper. It has been a difficult process, trying to make our way in this country. Last week we rented a carriage from a livery not so very far from here, at the cost of one dollar per day—”
“That is a reasonable price,” interjected van der Poole, his hands folded across his ample belly and his head resting comfortably on his goiter.
“Yes, indeed. But not until we returned the rig were we told that we owed another dollar each day for the use of the horse. A miserable animal I might add, prone to crow-hop.”
Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Let me guess. That would have been Morgan Blake’s livery on Black Creek.”
The Frenchmen glanced at each other. “You see, Mr. Bonner. We require the assistance of a good guide, an informed man with experience, if we are to make a home for ourselves and our families.”
“You do,” Nathaniel agreed. “But I ain’t the right man for that job.”
“Can we not tempt you and your good lady with land? We have two hundred thousand acres of prime forest and pasture-land, on the shores of Lake Ontario—” Pharoux’s enthusiasm rose as quickly as his temper.
“The survey is not complete,” interrupted Desjardins. “But we have every reason to believe that the property is as it has been described to us. We call our settlement Castorland, for we are told that there is a great abundance of beaver. Would you not be interested in joining us to expand your holdings?”
Nathaniel felt van der Poole’s attention focusing on him, waiting to see how he would react to this offer of yet more land, when he had just married into a thousand acres.
“We are well settled where we are,” Nathaniel said. “I’m sure the judge can recommend a good man who’s interested in going west.”
The servant approached with a platter of beef, and Desjardins took a generous portion. “We are on our way tomorrow to visit Mr. Schuyler at Saratoga. He has a guide in mind, I am told.”
Elizabeth’s eyes darted between the men; Nathaniel could almost see her thoughts, the questions rising like bubbles to the surface, but her cousin stepped in with a question before she could find a way to get started.
“Speaking of travel, when wilt thou return to Paradise?” Hench asked. “Perhaps I could travel with thee. I have a few days, and I would like to visit with the rest of the family there.”
Nathaniel made it clear to Samuel Hench that he was more than welcome to accompany them to Paradise, if he had his own horse and cared to leave tomorrow.
“So soon?” asked the judge, sitting forward. “You’ve only been in Albany two days.”
“We need to be at home,” Nathaniel said. He shifted uncomfortably. Having called the afternoon’s dream to mind, he could not easily put it away again.
“We have heard nothing yet of your travels through the bush, Mrs. Bonner.”
Pharoux’s fork clattered onto his plate. “You have traveled through the bush, madame?”
“Mrs. Bonner has been all the way to Canada and back again,” the judge offered.
“But this is wonderful!” cried Desjardins. “My wife planned to stay behind because we heard that the journey was too arduous for women. But perhaps if you would speak to her, Mrs. Bonner—”
“I would tell her to stay with her children in Albany.” Elizabeth’s fingers strained white on the stem of her wineglass. “I would tell her to wait until you and your colleagues have made a suitable home for her.”
Desjardins’ face fell.
“It was difficult for thee then, cousin?” Samuel Hench’s question was fueled by concern rather than bald curiosity, and in response the line of Elizabeth’s jaw softened, and she lowered her chin.
“It was the most difficult and the most important experience of my life,” she said. “I will never be the same again.”
“I see thy mother in thy nature,” Hench said with a distant smile. “In thee is the same combination of fire and ice that ruled her, and in the end caused her to leave the Life to join Alfred Middleton in the wilderness.”
The room fell quiet at this, and he seemed to realize what he had said. He bowed his head.
“Pardon me, cousin. I am too familiar.”
“No, not at all.” Elizabeth’s voice was hoarse. “My mother may have left the Friends to marry my father, but she stayed a Quaker in her heart. Enough so that I value the truth, and would not have you apologize for speaking it.”
Judge van der Poole said, “Since we are speaking so plainly to one another, and have come to such an understanding, then perhaps Mrs. Bonner will satisfy my curiosity. I know I have not been very clever in disguising it. Jack Lingo has long been a problem to us all, and I would like to know if I can thank you for removing that particular thorn from my side. Will you tell us what happened to you?”
Nathaniel watched her over the edge of his wineglass. She might simply silence the judge with a withering look, but some part of him hoped that she would not. It would do her good, to tell this story in this small group of men who were ready and even eager to find favor with her. Maybe then she could be done with this business, finally. She sought out his gaze.
“Boots,” he said, as if they were alone. “It’s your story to tell.”
And so she told it, slowly at first with hesitations that had all of the men in the room leaning forward, their eyes reflecting candlelight and curiosity. She searched out her words carefully, looking down into her lap at times with a small frown. At the worst of it, she crossed her arms across her belly and met Nathaniel’s eye. When she was finished, there was a small silence. Even the servants seemed to be paralyzed, until the judge gestured for more wine.
“Mrs. Bonner,” began Desjardins in a subdued voice. “You are an amazing woman, if I may say so. But there is one thing you have not told us, and if I do not ask I will always be curious.”
She raised a brow, not directly in encouragement, but neither did she turn away.
“What happened to Dutch Ton, as you call him? Did you find his body in the clearing when you returned there with your young Mohawk friend?”
“No,” she said. “We did not. Otter found his trail, but there was no time to follow it. Dutch Ton is either dead in the bush, or he will make himself known one day.”
“Does this frighten you?” asked Samuel Hench.
She shook her head. “He saved my life, once. I don’t have any reason to believe that he would come after me in anger.”
But Nathaniel had seen her tilt her chin like that before, and he knew how to read her anxiety. Maybe better than she did herself.
Samuel Hench accompanied them back to the Schuyler estate under a velvet dark sky. Van der Poole had lent them a lantern, and it swung back and forth on its handle with a steady squeak. Walking in a bobbing pool of light with the men on either side of her, Elizabeth enjoyed the fresh night air after the long hours in close company, as tired as she was. Samuel Hench was a surprise, but a pleasant one, and she wished for more time to spend with him.
“Didst thou not wish to talk to me of a business matter, cousin?”
She felt Nathaniel’s surprise even though his face gave none of it away.
Elizabeth began slowly. “You are still in the Life?”
“I am.”
“I would like to engage your help in a fairly delicate matter.” She paused. “To be blunt, I would like you to act as my agent where I need to remain anonymous. The first step is to provide you with the necessary funds, and the second step is that you stop in Johnstown and visit a blacksmithy in the vicinity of the courthouse. Then there is more business of the same kind for you in Paradise with a slaveholder by the name of Glove, if you will see this through to the end.”
She laid out her plan. Even in the simplest terms, it sounded fantastic and, she feared, self-interested. But for many weeks, even for months, she had been wondering how best to do what she felt she must do, and now that there was no lack of funds, and a means to her end, she could not be still. If Nathaniel objected to the large amount of money she proposed to spend, there was no sign of it. She thought that if she dared look at him she might even find him smiling.
Her cousin was another matter. It was a large plan, and perhaps too ambitious. Unfortunately, his face stayed in shadow and she could not judge his reaction.
“Thou realizes that each of the men will bring a price of somewhere around three hundred dollars? Is the blacksmith well trained?”
“I expect that he is, I have no direct knowledge of him.” Elizabeth stopped and put something in Samuel Hench’s hand. “When you speak to him alone, please call him Joshua, and give him this.” The pale stone in the center of Joe’s bijou flashed once in the lantern light. “If he would like to come see us in Paradise, we will tell him what we know of the death of the man who gave us this for him.”
Samuel Hench nodded thoughtfully. “I will invite him to accompany me to Paradise, if he so chooses. I understand that the two young slaves at the Glove mill can read and write, and keep books. And they are skilled managers?”
“That is perhaps a bit too much to claim, but they are both capable and hard workers, and with considerable talents.”
Nathaniel’s silence was becoming more noticeable. She tried to gauge his mood with a sideways glance, and saw him lost in thought. Samuel Hench was concerned with the details of the task she set before him, and seemed not to notice.
“Just two more issues, cousin. First, there are no further directions for me on the matter of the others, just that three young women be given their freedom. Have I understood thee correctly?”
She nodded. “I will leave the matter of who, and under what circumstances, to your discretion. I do not wish to know any names, unless this becomes necessary for some other reason. But it is quite important to me that for each of the young men who are given their freedom, one young woman is given the same opportunity.”
There was another long and comfortable silence. Finally Samuel Hench stopped, and turned to them.
“Nathaniel, how dost thou feel about this plan of thy wife’s? It will cost something close to two thousand dollars before it is done.”
“We can afford it,” Nathaniel said easily. “At the moment, at any rate.”
She squeezed his arm thankfully and said nothing.
“Well, then. It is a worthwhile undertaking and I will make it my Cause, under one condition. The young women will need support after they are released. Help setting up a home, and provisions, and some kind of meaningful work. Husbands, eventually. I will take on responsibility for their settling well, after thy funds have bought their freedom.”
Elizabeth nodded without hesitation. “That would be a relief to me. I do not mind so much how it is done, cousin, as long as it is done. And as long as it is done without know
ledge of my—or our—participation. I do not wish these people to feel any obligation to us and I do not want to further complicate our position in Paradise. We have enough to deal with as it is.”
Samuel Hench smiled, finally. “If thy purpose were not wholly laudable, cousin, I might be tempted to call thee devious.”
Elizabeth felt Nathaniel’s arm tense under her hand. She thought he would laugh out loud at this, and was preparing to pinch him when she realized that his attention was suddenly focused elsewhere. At first Elizabeth heard nothing but the river and the night wind in the corn, but the hair on her arms and the nape of her neck rose and she felt the danger there in the pit of her belly, as keenly as she felt the child rise and kick weakly in protest at her sudden silence.
Hench wore no weapons, but Nathaniel’s rifle made a solid enough sound as he swung it into his hands.
“Who goes there?” His voice traveled in the dark like an arrow.
“It’s me, Nathaniel,” came a female voice from the darkness behind the Schuylers’ gate. Many-Doves appeared in the circle of lantern light. “Put that down, for God’s sake. I’ve been waiting for hours. That old Dutch woman wouldn’t tell me where you were.”
“My God,” Elizabeth said. “What has happened?”
Many-Doves said, “There’s trouble. Bears was afraid to leave the other women alone, and so I came on horseback.”
Nathaniel reached her in one stride. “Tell me.”
“Billy Kirby arrested your father for taking a buck out of season.”
“Billy Kirby?” In amazement and outrage, Elizabeth found her voice.
Many-Doves nodded. “He was voted sheriff the day you left the village.”
Elizabeth made a noise of protest, but Nathaniel was focused, as he always was, on the more important issue. The anger would come later. “He’s locked up?”
“Since last night.” Many-Doves sent a significant glance to Samuel Hench.
“My cousin,” Elizabeth said, distracted.
