Dawn on a Distant Shore

by Sara Donati

  “The Tory gold?” Liam asked. His tone had a studied evenness, his voice cracking slightly.

  Nathaniel snorted. “You’ve been listening to Axel’s tall tales again,” he said, hunkering down. He gave the lock a twist and the lid opened smoothly.

  On the top was a bundle of papers rolled in oilskin and tied: the Deed of Gift that had transferred the land patent to Elizabeth, their marriage lines, a sales agreement for the schoolhouse Nathaniel had built and then sold to her at her insistence, other papers that would argue louder and longer in a court of law if they had to fight again to keep Hidden Wolf. There was a wooden box of his mother’s things, which he put to the side. Underneath, a faint shimmering, and Liam drew in his breath.

  “Silver,” he breathed. “Pure?”

  “Not exactly.” Nathaniel reached for the empty pack he had brought with him. “It’s hard to work it here, but we do the best we can.”

  Liam’s blue eyes blinked. “There is a mine on Hidden Wolf, after all.”

  “Aye,” said Nathaniel. “There is.”

  “The north face?”

  Nathaniel nodded.

  “Does the judge know?”

  “No. Guess he never went looking for it.”

  Liam was silent. At his sides his hands clenched and unclenched convulsively.

  Nathaniel said, “I’m only bothering with this now because I may need it in Montréal. The silver ain’t mine, though.”

  The boy’s head snapped up. “It ain’t? Whose is it, Elizabeth’s?”

  “The mine belongs to the Kahnyen’kehàka,” said Nathaniel. “So does the silver. But they won’t mind me using what I need to get Otter and Hawkeye out of trouble.”

  Liam crouched down, his eyes fixed on Nathaniel. “But the mountain sits on land that used to belong to the judge. He bought the patent at auction.”

  “True.” Nathaniel continued working, but he watched Liam’s face from the corner of his eye.

  “And he passed it on to Elizabeth, and then you married her.”

  “That’s true, too,” Nathaniel agreed. “Although it didn’t seem nearly so simple as that at the time. What’s your point?”

  Liam stopped and studied his hands. It was a habit he had that made him seem older than his years: thinking through what he had to say before he let it go. Another thing that distinguished him from his brother Billy.

  “Hidden Wolf belongs to you, and so does the mine. You have legal claim and the silver is yours—” Liam faltered, seeing the expression on Nathaniel’s face.

  “There’s more than one kind of law,” Nathaniel said. “The way I see it is, if anybody has a claim to the mine, it’s the Kahnyen’kehàka.”

  Liam stared through the waterfall toward the place where the cabins stood. “Does Elizabeth see it that way, too?”

  “She does. We’d sign the mountain over tomorrow, if the court would allow it.”

  The boy swallowed so that the muscles in his throat rose and fell in a wave. “My brother would get out of his grave to stop you from giving Hidden Wolf back to the Mohawk.”

  Nathaniel shifted his weight back on his heels. He could almost see Billy in Liam’s face. He had the same low, broad forehead, high cheekbones, and narrow-bridged nose. On his upper lip and the backs of his hands was the red-gold down that marked all the Kirbys. One day soon Liam would be as big as Billy had been, and as strong. But there was something in Liam’s eyes that his older brother had been lacking. Nathaniel said, “And you? What would you do?”

  “It ain’t none of my business,” Liam said.

  “Ah, but it is,” Nathaniel said. “If you’re one of us, it’s your business. This—” He looked at the chest, and then out through the falling wall of water, his gaze taking it all in: Lake in the Clouds, Hidden Wolf. “This is Hannah’s birthright, and Many-Doves, and their children’s. It’s my business to keep it safe for them, and it’s your business, too. If you’re one of us.”

  The boy flushed, color moving up his throat. He stared at Nathaniel, and then at the silver.

  “I’m one of you,” he said hoarsely.

  “Then let’s get to work,” Nathaniel said, handing him a pack. “It’s too damn cold to talk.”

  Not quite sunrise, and Elizabeth was wide awake. The babies had nursed just an hour earlier and were resting easily, but she lay unwilling to sleep. She had lit a candle, willfully putting away the small voice that chided her for this extravagance, and she lay on her side watching the first colors of the dawn through the ice-crusted panes of the single small window. The window was another luxury, and at the moment it was one she regretted. Soon the sun would come over the crest and Nathaniel would wake, and then he would get up and be gone.

  She had encouraged him to go; she had insisted on it. And still the idea of his going was suddenly overwhelming. Elizabeth was filled with dread, with vague worries about Montréal and the troubles there, with more detailed imaginings of the things that might come to pass—that often came to pass—in the endless forests, and with irritation at herself. She would not make this leave-taking harder on him.

  But she must study his face now. This face she knew so well. He would be thirty-six years old in the spring and already there was a single strand of white at his hairline. Straight brows, a scar beneath his left eye. The strong lines of nose and jaw. His mouth, the curve of it. The groove in his chin where the shadow of his beard was darkest.

  The sun had not yet risen, but she sensed a change in the rhythm of his breathing. There was a small tremor in the muscle of his cheek. She held her breath, hoping that he would settle again, hoping he would sleep until noon if it would keep him here one more day.

  His arm came up and around her, and pulled her down to him.

  “You’re so edgy, Boots,” he said softly. “Come, rest with me.”

  Elizabeth put her face against his neck and said what she had been determined not to say. “I wish you did not need to go.”

  His arm tightened around her shoulders.

  They were quiet together for a moment like that, the only movement between them his fingers on her temple, gently stroking. Under her hands his chest was as hard as oak. She drew in his smells and felt her pores opening, her nerves waking.

  “I wish—” she said finally. And stopped. She felt him waiting. When she turned up her face to his, Elizabeth found his eyes open and calm with knowing. He knew, he always knew. Nathaniel kissed her, and then she did cry. Just a little, enough to flavor the kiss with salt and regret and longing. He made a comforting sound against her mouth, his hands cradling her face.

  She held him to her, and kissed him back. It was all they could have now, in this little bit of time left, and with her body still so raw. But it was good to hold him, to feel that he wanted her, and to know that she could still want him back. In spite of the astonishing range of aches her body presented to her, still Nathaniel’s kiss made her breasts pulse and tingle, and in the pit of her belly there was the blossoming of nerves she had discovered on that winter morning when she had first learned the feel of him.

  There was a tightening and then a trickle of milk. She broke away with a sob of surprise.

  “Shhh.” He caught her up again, pulled her back to him. “Never mind, never mind. That happens. Never mind.” With one hand he raised her chin. He was smiling, a small smile. “I’m just sorry I can’t take you up on the offer.”

  She pushed against his shoulder with the palm of her hand, but he wouldn’t let go. With his mouth against her temple, he whispered to her.

  “I’ll come back to you, Boots, and you’ll be healed and we’ll be together. It’ll be warm enough then in the cave. We’ll get to know each other again where we started, you and me. How does that sound?”

  Elizabeth brushed the hair away from his face. “It sounds as if you should be up and away, so that you can come home again. ‘Journeys end in lovers meeting,’ after all.”

  “That’s one quote I’ll remember.” Nathaniel laughed. “It’ll se
rve me well on the long road home.”

  3

  The March winds came off the St. Lawrence in a rush, nosing up Montreal’s narrow lanes to seek out Nathaniel where he stood in the shadows of the Auberge St. Gabriel. Most of the city’s residents had retreated over slick cobblestones to their dinners by the time the seminary clock chimed four, but Nathaniel stood motionless and attentive, oblivious to the icy snow that rattled on roofs of tin and slate.

  The door of the tavern opened and a servant clattered out, bent to one side by the weight of her basket. Behind her followed two redcoats, shoulders hunched. Nathaniel pressed himself harder against the wall, relaxing even as they went past. Their eyes were fixed on their boots, and their minds on the duty that had drawn them away from hearth and ale. He was invisible to them.

  Nathaniel continued scanning the darkening street. Between the houses opposite there was a small flash of movement. A child, underdressed, searching the gutter as he slipped along in the shadows. For a moment Nathaniel watched, and then he stepped into the lantern light and held up a coin. The boy’s gaze snapped toward the faint shimmer and he angled across the lane in three bounds, to follow Nathaniel into the shadows.

  Perhaps ten years old, Nathaniel guessed, and small for his age. Eyes wary, one crusted red; his skin covered with filth and bruises. But he grinned. “Monsieur?”

  Nathaniel held out the shilling and it disappeared between quick fingers.

  “What’s your name?”

  “They call me Claude,” said the boy. “For another coin I will tell you my family name.”

  Nathaniel exhaled sharply through his nose. “There’s another coin if you get a message to the big Scot inside.” It was a long time since Nathaniel had used his French, but the boy’s nod was encouraging. “Tell him to meet Wolf-Running-Fast at Iona’s, and make sure nobody hears you,” he finished.

  “The auberge is full of Scots,” the boy said. “All Montréal is full of them. Will any Scot serve, Monsieur Wolf-Running-Fast?”

  “The tallest one in the room,” said Nathaniel. “White haired, answers to Rab MacLachlan. With a red dog, almost as big as you.”

  There was a flicker of interest in the boy’s eyes. “A coin for each of them, the man and dog?”

  “If they show up alone, you’ll get a coin for each of them.”

  “And one for showing them the way.”

  Nathaniel laughed softly at the idea; Robbie could find his way to Iona’s purblind. “You’ll get your coins if you do your job. And a plate of mutton stew, too, I’ll wager.”

  “Wolf-Running-Fast,” repeated the boy. “Iona.” And at Nathaniel’s nod, he disappeared into the darkened alleyway.

  Nathaniel had been trained too well to take anything for granted, and so he waited patiently in the shadows opposite Iona’s cottage, in spite of the wind and the rumbling in his gut. Now that he was here, finally, he remembered why he had stayed away all these years. At seventeen he had given up both his innocence and his virginity in Montréal. The first had been lost watching merchants and priests angle for the peltry and the souls of the Huron and Cree, Abenaki and Hodenosaunee. The second he had surrendered with less of a struggle to the lieutenant governor’s daughter. The thought of Giselle Somerville left a strange taste in his mouth, as if he had bit into an apple that looked sound but was inwardly foul. He had thought she could not touch him anymore, but it was her at the bottom of this trouble: twenty years, and she had still managed to reach out and put a cold finger on his cheek.

  The snow picked up, whipping into his eyes. He pulled his hood down farther and sought the warm center of himself, as he had been trained to do as a boy. At home both hearths would be blazing. There might be venison and corn bread and dried cranberry grunt. Finished with her work, Hannah would be bent over sewing, or a book if she had her way. Nathaniel imagined Elizabeth close by with a child at her breast. He could see her quite clearly; the heart-shaped face, the first worry lines at the corners of her eyes, her mouth the deep red of wild strawberries. By evening time her hair had worked itself free to curl damp against her temple, falling over the angle of her neck and shoulders bent protectively around the child in her arms.

  He had no clear pictures of the babies to call on. It had been too short a time.

  Nathaniel shook himself slightly. If he could concentrate, if he could get the job done here, he could be on his way home to them in no time at all, traveling with his father and Otter and Rab. The ice roads were frozen solid; they could make good time. At night they would sleep in snow caves and cook whatever they could shoot over a fire of their own making while Otter told his story: how he had landed here in Montréal when he was supposedly headed west, and how he had got mixed up with the Somervilles. The last word they had had of Otter was in December, when Rab MacLachlan came to Lake in the Clouds and brought the news that the boy was wound up with Giselle. Worse still was Rab’s report that Hawkeye was on his way to Montréal to untangle Otter from the mess.

  Moncrieff’s letter and the news that they were both in gaol hadn’t really come as too much of a shock: Canada wasn’t a good place for the Bonner men; never had been. Especially not when Giselle Somerville was involved. In the deep cold of the night shadows two things were clear to Nathaniel: they had to get his father and Otter out of the gaol as quickly as it could be managed, and they had to avoid the Somervilles. Once they were safe at home again there would be time enough to deal with Otter. He might be Hannah’s favorite uncle, but he was also a seventeen-year-old who had dragged four grown men into a dangerous situation.

  A muffled whoof! and the red dog appeared in the lane. At the side of Iona’s cottage there was a glimmer of white hair and a raised hand, and a door opened and closed. Nathaniel waited five more minutes. When there was no movement, he followed Robbie MacLachlan inside.

  It was a small room, lit only by the fire in the hearth and a betty lamp. The house smelled of woodsmoke, roast mutton, tallow, the wet dog who lay like a twitching log in front of the hearth and the unwashed boy who crouched next to her, shoveling stew into his mouth with his fingers. Claude shrugged a hello in Nathaniel’s direction, but Robbie had him by the shoulders before he could get out one word in greeting to either of them.

  “Nathaniel,” said the big man, bent over so as not to knock his head on the low-beamed ceiling, his broad, high-colored face creased in both pleasure and concern. “What are ye doin’ here? Shouldna ye be at hame wi’ Elizabeth? Is she well? Is the bairn come?”

  “She’s well, she’s very well,” Nathaniel reassured him. “And she’s given me healthy twins, a boy and a girl.”

  Robbie’s open expression clouded. “But then, why are ye here? What’s taken ye fra’ yer guidwife’s side?”

  “I came because I was sent for,” Nathaniel said. “Moncrieff wrote to say my father wanted me here. Isn’t he with Otter in the garrison gaol?”

  Robbie ran a hand over the white bristle on his jowls. “Aye, that’s true. But Hawkeye nivver asked that we send for ye. In fact, lad, he was glad tae ken ye safe at hame. I canna think why Moncrieff wad write and tell ye sic a thing.”

  “But I can,” said a calm voice at the low threshold to the other room. A woman appeared there: of small size and uncertain age, the kind who didn’t draw attention to herself, unless you took note of the animated expression of her eyes.

  “Miss Iona,” said Nathaniel. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, it has,” she said. When she smiled, it was easier to see the young woman she had once been, and to give the stories credence. Almost twenty years ago Nathaniel had first made her acquaintance: Wee Iona, men in the bush called her, or Sister Iona, for she had once worn the veil and that was a fact few could overlook, or forget. How she had left the convent, and why, was the stuff of legend and rumor.

  Now she moved around her small home, offering him her hospitality. “Time has treated you well, Nathaniel Bonner. Take those wet things off now, come along. There’s stew, if young Claude her
e hasn’t yet eaten his way to the bottom of the pot.” The Gaelic hovered there just beneath the surface, all her s sounds soft and slurred. But her mind was as sharp as her voice was soft, and he felt her taking his measure.

  Nathaniel accepted a piece of sacking from her to towel his head. “Do you have reason not to trust Moncrieff?”

  She crouched down before the cooking hearth as nimbly as a girl of twenty. “He’s a Scot, is he not?”

  Claude shot a broken-toothed grin toward Robbie, who blushed and sputtered with indignation.

  Nathaniel pulled a few coins from his pocket, and held them out to the boy. He sprang up, wiping his mouth with the back of one grimy hand. At Iona’s suggestion of a warm sleeping place in the barn, he shot out the door, pausing only to glance back at Nathaniel.

  “If you should have need of me again, you can find me near the auberge at sunset.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Nathaniel said.

  When Claude was well away, Robbie returned immediately to the topic at hand. “Iona, I’m surprised at ye. A Hieland lass born and raised and still ye stan’ there and curse every Scot on the continent tae the de’il. It isna fair, lass.”

  “Perhaps not,” she conceded with a raised shoulder. “But you Lowlanders are a troublesome lot, and Moncrieff is worse than most. He wants what he wants.”

  “And that is?” asked Nathaniel, flexing his fingers in the warmth.

  “Is it not clear? He wants you and your father on a ship for Scotland. Which is why you sit here in front of my fire, Nathaniel, instead of with your wife and children at home. Of course, you must first get Hawkeye out of the garrison to bring about that end; Moncrieff is counting on that.” There was no anger in her voice, nothing of resentment in her tone: she laid out what she knew for his appreciation, or rejection. Nathaniel’s first impulse was to believe her.

  “How do you know him so well?”

  Robbie cleared his throat. “Moncrieff and I spend a fair amount o’ time here, talkin’.”