Dawn on a Distant Shore

by Sara Donati

  We are well in body. My brother and sister are strong and healthy. But I am worried for Curiosity, whose spirits are very low, and for my father, who walks the ship staring at the shore, and for Bone-in-Her-Back, who is so distracted that she forgets to eat, and most of all for my Grandfather Hawk-Eye and for Robbie, who are behind us on another ship that hides itself in the fog.

  I have many stories to tell of this journey. I have learned much. Yesterday a boy called Mungo died of a swelling that turned his belly as hard and hot as a boiling stone. He passed into the shadowlands quietly. I have seen others cured of strange illnesses and wounds. With a thin metal stick the doctor called Hakim reached into a sailor’s body and crushed a stone that was blocking his water. He screamed so loud that he broke his voice but he is alive and will mend, now. The Hakim has given me medicines from his homeland to bring to you.

  Scotland is wet and brown and green and yellow, but there are no trees only hills covered with rough grass and brush called heather that the sailors laugh and weep to see. They have been longer from their homes than I have been from mine, but I know what is in their hearts. I would be very glad to see the fir with the broken top that stands outside my window. Bone-in-Her-Back says that there are trees here, but not many. They burned most of them long ago, and now they burn black rock they dig out of the ground, or even the ground itself, cut into squares. I do not wonder that my father’s mother left this place.

  Last night a woman called Mrs. MacKay disappeared. The sailors have searched every corner of the ship many times but she is nowhere to be found among the living. She mourned a lost child, and I think she has gone to find it.

  My father says that we will finish our business here and sail for home soon. I know he wishes this to be true, and so do I.

  Your Granddaughter called Squirrel

  Dear Liam,

  This ship has come to rest in a wide water called a firth with England on one side and Scotland on the other. Scotland is where my Grandmother Cora was born, and perhaps my grandfather’s people, but it is a very strange and lonely kind of place. We were brought here against our wishes, and will stay only until we can find another ship to bring us home.

  In my Grandmother’s cornfield the bean plants will be winding up the young stalks toward the sun. I think of this time a year ago when we came upon bears eating in the strawberry fields under a fat moon, do you recall? And they chased us away, and we ran until we fell and then we laughed.

  Elizabeth bids me give you her best greetings and to say she hopes you are keeping up with your schoolwork. My father says he knows you will be strong, and patient. Curiosity asks you to visit with Galileo when you might. She fears he must be melancholy. She says too she hopes you never get it in your head to go to sea.

  We never meant to be so long away, but I will bring many stories with me, and you will tell me your stories, too.

  Your true friend Hannah Bonner,

  also called Squirrel by the Kahnyen’kehàka

  of the Wolf Longhouse, her mother’s people

  Elizabeth shredded her handkerchief into strips as she watched the packet Marianne slip out of the Solway Firth on the first leg of her journey to New-York.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait. They waited for high tide, which would bring the excisemen. They would come in the morning to examine the captain’s papers and cargo and collect their duties, and while the tide was high and the broad sand flats covered, barges would move between ship and shore with agonizing slowness. When the last bale of tobacco and last keg of spice were discharged, it would be their turn to go to shore. And once on shore they would find quarters and wait until Hawkeye and Robbie arrived on the Jackdaw.

  If the Jackdaw arrived at all.

  She paced to the other side of the room, where the babies sat propped up in their baskets. Lily looked up from mouthing her fist and smiled broadly. A little of the unhappiness went out of Elizabeth as she sat down on the floor next to her children and pulled Lily into her lap. The baby grabbed at her hair, and Daniel waved his hands in the air wildly, shouting for his share of the diversion.

  “Those children will pull every hair out of your head before they weaned,” Curiosity said at the door.

  “Hair will grow back.” But Elizabeth untangled Lily’s fingers and blew a bubble against her palm to distract her.

  Curiosity sat down heavily on the window seat to stare out the transom. The vague light and deep shadows made her face seem almost unreal, carved from some dark and unyielding stone. Her shoulders looked thin even under the heavy shawl she had wrapped around herself.

  “It don’t look like much.”

  Elizabeth got up and put Lily on her hip. For a moment she was silent as she studied the vague shape of Southerness lighthouse, a smudge of light in the slanting rain. “It is rather bleak. But Scotland has its own charm, when the weather is fair.”

  Curiosity’s expression was so faraway that Elizabeth wondered if she had even heard. Concerned, she crossed to the settee and sat down. Lily leaned toward Curiosity and put out her arms.

  “We got to keep our spirits up, for the children.” Curiosity took Lily and settled her on her lap. And then: “I cain’t get that poor MacKay woman out of my head.”

  Daniel squawked loudly, and Elizabeth was glad of the excuse to get up again. She did not like to think of Margreit MacKay, who had gone into the sea so quietly that no one—not even her husband, who had been on watch—had noticed.

  “She must have been very distraught,” she said finally.

  “Maybe if we wasn’t all so worried about Mungo—” Curiosity cleared her throat. “It’s sorry times when a woman got no safe place to go but the other side.”

  Elizabeth buried her face in Daniel’s neck. When she could speak again she said, “You have told me to keep faith so often,” she said. “Now I will say the same to you. I know in my heart that we will get home.”

  Curiosity gave her a vacant smile, but before she could answer, Nathaniel had come through the door.

  There were shadows beneath his eyes, but there was something bright and alive in his expression.

  He looked from Elizabeth to Curiosity and back again.

  “What is it?” Elizabeth’s voice wavered.

  “There’s a ship you should know about,” he said, and closed the door behind himself.

  They sat around the table and listened to Nathaniel’s story. The whole coast was alive with smugglers, it seemed, and there was one in particular that a talkative sailor had spoken of, called the Black Prince. If they could slip away once on shore and keep themselves hidden for even a day, it might be possible to make contact with its captain. He looked Elizabeth directly in the eye.

  “It’s a long shot,” he said. “We may not get very far.”

  Curiosity grunted, an impatient sound. “Ain’t nothin’ gained if we don’t try. If they catch us—”

  She broke off, her brow creased as she studied Lily. Her mouth settled hard. “I say we should try.”

  Elizabeth heard herself sigh. Nathaniel reached over and took Daniel from her to settle the baby on his own lap. “Tell me what’s on your mind, Boots.”

  But she could not. Looking into his face, alive now with hope, she could not ask all the questions that came to mind, or lay out for him the fears that would not rest, no matter what kind of logic she brought to bear on them.

  Curiosity rose suddenly. “Give me that boy. I believe these children could use a little fresh air. We’ll just go and see how your big sister is gettin’ on with that Hakim fellow.”

  “There is no need,” said Elizabeth, but Curiosity gave her a hard look.

  “You turnin’ down a little privacy when it’s offered to you? Seem to me you two got some talkin’ to do.”

  Elizabeth felt Nathaniel waiting behind her. She nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Just talk,” said Curiosity gruffly. “That’s all the thanks I need.”

  When she had closed the door behind herself, Elizabeth
got up from the table and went to the windows. The shifting storm let the last of the evening light seep through the cloud cover, rough bars of gold against the hard lines of the coast. A two-masted schooner hugged the shore, bobbing about like a toy. If she went up on deck and turned in the other direction she would see England again. The very thought made her tired.

  “Here I am back where I began,” she said. There was a tremor in her voice she could not help.

  Nathaniel’s arms came around her from the back, and he leaned down to rest his chin on her shoulder.

  “Does it look like Oakmere?” His tone was calm and even, and she was thankful for it.

  “No, this is nothing like the Devon countryside. But I can smell England in the air.”

  He smiled; she could feel it.

  “You do not believe me.”

  “I believe you, Boots. I was just thinking about your Green Man.”

  Elizabeth turned in his arms until she was facing him. “The Green Man? What brings that old tale to mind?”

  He pointed with his chin toward the shore. “My mother told me about Scotland, what it looked like, but I never had much of a picture in my mind. Now that I’ve seen it, I wonder if that Green Man that comes and scratches at windows is all that’s left of the trees.”

  Elizabeth jerked a little in surprise. “The spirit of the lost forests, you mean?” She put her head against his shoulder. “Of course,” she said softly. “That’s exactly what he must be.”

  “Boots,” said Nathaniel, tightening his grip on her. “Listen to me.”

  She waited.

  “I know you hate the idea of going off on a smuggler—wait, let me finish. There’s no denying that it scares you. But we’ve survived this far, haven’t we?”

  “We have.”

  “What is it, then?”

  She pulled away from him gently to walk to the far wall. There she stopped in front of Carryck’s intricately carved coat of arms. A white elk, a lion, shield and crown. In tenebris lux: light in the darkness.

  “I fear you will be angry at me if I say what I am thinking.”

  She had startled him; she felt it in the hand he put on her shoulder. In sudden resolution she spoke.

  “Nathaniel, if we should get away, all of us—do you think that they will leave us alone? The earl will not rest until he speaks to your father, or to you—” She wavered, seeing his expression darken.

  “So I think we should see this out. You see, I knew you would be angry.”

  Nathaniel inclined his head. “I’m surprised, is all.”

  “But don’t you see, if we just spoke to him—”

  “Are you hoping he’ll change his mind, or I’ll change mine?”

  She threw up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I knew we could not talk about this.”

  Nathaniel let out a long sigh. “So you think we should spend another week or two weeks or however long it takes, go see the man and let him have his say. Is that it? And what makes you think he won’t try to keep us?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “He cannot be completely blind to propriety, Nathaniel. To keep a whole family captive indefinitely—”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “Even if you are right, you mustn’t forget my aunt Merriweather. She knows where we are by now—Will is certain to have told her about Carryck when she came to Québec. She may be at Oakmere already, waiting for word. If she does not soon hear from me, she will take things into her own hands. She has an army of solicitors and lawyers at her disposal, you must realize.”

  He grinned sourly. “I don’t doubt it.”

  Elizabeth ran her finger over the coat of arms and traced the elaborate gilded curls on the lion’s tail. “There is another reason to at least let the earl have his say.”

  Nathaniel tensed, but she pushed on.

  “There’s something else at play here, some kind of real trouble …”

  His expression shifted to disbelief. “You ain’t worried about the earl? Boots, listen to me. Whatever troubles the man has, there’s one thing for sure: he won’t take no for an answer. We’ll listen to his story and then wish him well and go home. You think he’ll be satisfied with that?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No,” she said. “Of course he will not be satisfied. But then neither will you, if you walk away and never hear what he has to say. Five or ten years from now when we still look at every stranger who comes to Paradise as a danger to the children, will you regret not seeing this through?”

  The rain had picked up again and it lashed itself against the transom windows in great sheets. Nathaniel seemed to be counting the raindrops, so concentrated was his expression.

  “Let me ask you this, Boots. If a ship was to come alongside this minute and offer to take us all back home, what would you want to do?”

  Elizabeth studied her own hands. She could give him the easiest, the most logical answer: I want to go home. And it would be the truth. She wanted to take her children away from this place with such intensity that she sometimes woke from a deep sleep to find herself out of bed and half-dressed, with no sense of where she might be going except away. Away from Moncrieff and Carryck, away from the faceless Campbells.

  “When we go, Nathaniel, then I want to leave all of this behind us. Forever. For good. I am afraid if we go now, we will drag it all home with us, and we will never really be free of Carryck.”

  Nathaniel pulled back, his eyes narrowing into slits. He ran a hand through his hair as he turned away, his shoulders rising hard against the fabric of his shirt. With his back still turned to her he said, “I’m going up on deck for a while. I need to think some things through.”

  Hannah had a game she played with the twins when they were put down for the night. She would lean over their crib, and in turn she would put a hand on each baby’s chest to croon to them in Kahnyen’kehàka.

  “You are Two-Sparrows, daughter of Bone-in-Her-Back, who took Wolf-Running-Fast as her husband. Your sister Squirrel is daughter of Sings-from-Books, daughter of Falling-Day, daughter of Made-of-Bones, who is clan mother of the Wolf longhouse of the Kahnyen’kehàka people who live at Good Pasture. Sleep well, my little sister.”

  By the time she finished, Lily’s eyelids had fluttered closed. Even Daniel, who fought sleep as a matter of course, quieted when Hannah began to sing to him. She called him Little-Fox, the infant name that Falling-Day had given him when she came to them through the winter storm. The baby listened with his brow furrowed in such a comical way that Elizabeth might have laughed out loud.

  Elizabeth wondered where they would be when they put the children down tomorrow night. She glanced again over her shoulder into the main cabin where Curiosity sat staring blankly at a book in her lap while Charlie cleared the last of their meal away. He was red-eyed still, and there was a vacant look about him. Elizabeth wanted to speak to him, to offer some comfort; she knew very well what it was to lose a brother. But in her current state of agitation she thought she would do him little good.

  Nathaniel had still not returned from his walk on deck; the little rosewood clock ticked on resolutely toward morning.

  She did not think she would be able to sleep, but Elizabeth slipped away immediately and dreamed of Margreit MacKay. Mrs. MacKay paced the cabin, rocking her lost child against her breast and murmuring to herself, the same words over and over again: Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio.

  What danger? Elizabeth asked her. What battle?

  But there was no answer, only the prayer said over the silent form of the child: Archangel Michael, defend us.

  Elizabeth snapped up out of sleep, sweat running down her face.

  “Boots,” Nathaniel said from the dark. “You were weeping in your sleep.”

  She touched her face, and found it wet.

  “Just a dream,” she said, wiping her cheeks with her fingers. “Just a dream. Why don’t you come to bed?”

  She could barely ma
ke out his shape as he came to sit beside her. He smelled of salt air, and of himself.

  “You’ve got a neck cramp again.”

  Elizabeth had to smile. “I do not know if I like the fact that you can see so well in the dark.”

  His fingers were strong and cold on her shoulder, his breathing was even and steady at her ear. She shuddered a little as he sought out the coiled muscles and began to knead them.

  He said, “I shouldn’t have left angry. I’m sorry for it.”

  Elizabeth leaned back harder against him, dropping her head to one side so that he could work the knot of muscle behind her ear.

  “We are all on edge,” she said softly.

  He was still angry. She felt it in his hands and heard it too in the way he pushed out what he had to say.

  “I guess you’re right about Carryck, but I wish to God you weren’t.”

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out again. “So do I.”

  Nathaniel’s fingers dug hard into her sore shoulder and she struggled a little against him.

  “Easy, Boots,” he said gruffly. “Let me work.”

  Her nightdress had slipped down over her shoulder and her skin rose to the cool night air, but a drop of sweat trickled down her hairline. Nathaniel’s hands coaxed and prodded, and little by little the knotty muscles began to relax.

  “You’re wound up like a clock.”

  “Oh, am I? And there’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

  He snorted softly through his nose and dug his thumbs deeper into the muscles at the juncture of neck and shoulder.

  Elizabeth squeaked. “You might just beat me, and get it over with.”

  He laughed. She reached behind herself to swat him, only half in jest. Nathaniel caught her wrist and in one movement he turned so that she was caught beneath him. He was breathing heavily.

  “It’s not a beating I’ve got in mind, Boots.”