by Sara Donati
“You got my letter,” he said, his voice creaking a little.
She said, “Let me see you walk.”
He blinked at her in surprise, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again.
“All these years I’ve been wondering how that break healed,” she said. “Let me see you walk.”
Liam turned away and walked five steps toward the lake and back, stopping where he had begun.
“You’re still limping. Does it bother you in wet weather?”
“It bothers me some,” he said, and then, more firmly: “I heard about Falling-Day and your little brother. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Hannah wrapped her arms around herself. “Thank you.”
Liam ran a hand over his hair. “I’m glad you came.”
She said, “I’ve been worried about you.” It was the truth, but she hadn’t planned to say it.
He looked away over the lake, squinting into the sun. “I thought of writing, but I never could think how to start. In the end it seemed maybe best to let sleeping dogs be.”
And what was there to say to that? Hannah rocked back on her heels and studied the way the breeze stirred the marsh grasses. The silence stretched out between them, the uncomfortable silence between strangers who had once been friends.
She said, “You changed your mind, then.”
“It got changed for me, I’d have to say.” But then he fell silent again while he nervously touched the weapons that hung from his belt, one after the other. He had that look that men got sometimes when they wanted a woman to make things easier, but didn’t want to ask for help. Hannah looked away, and at that moment he began to talk.
“When I left here that summer it was because I thought you weren’t coming back anymore.”
She nodded. “We figured as much.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Runs-from-Bears came home from Montreal without you and brought word you were on your way to Scotland.”
“And he brought you a letter from me.”
He smiled for the first time. “And a letter from you. The first one I ever got.”
“It was the first one I ever wrote.”
“It was spattered with blood,” said Liam. “Bears said it was his from the split scalp they gave him, but I always wondered.”
Then he lifted a shoulder as if to shrug off some burden sitting there. “The thing was, nobody had any idea of when we’d see you again, not even Bears. And then the lung fever started. Falling-Day took her family and went north to keep them safe from it, and I went south.”
“We never heard a word,” Hannah said. “I would have written if I had any idea where you were.”
“I went to sea.”
Hannah looked at him in surprise. “To sea?”
“Shipped out the first time in the fall of ninety-four. It weren’t until more than a year later that I heard you were back at Lake in the Clouds, and by that time—” He paused, and looked her directly in the eye. “It was too late.”
“Too late for what?”
He dropped his head and dragged a hand through his hair, frowning at his moccasins.
“The rumor is that I ran away because I took the gold hid on the mountain.”
Some of the awkwardness between them had begun to fade, but now it came back again full force. Hannah said, “What gold?”
Liam snorted softly. “Have it your way, then. According to rumor there was gold, and I took it.”
“It was Dubonnet who started that rumor,” said Hannah. “He once accused me of trying to poison him.”
“I see the man ain’t got any smarter with time,” said Liam. “I don’t suppose he could tell the truth to save his own life. But that rumor about the gold—”
Hannah cut him off with a raised hand. “I don’t suppose you came all this way to talk about old rumors.”
Liam sent her a sidelong glance. “So the gold ain’t gone?”
“What gold?”
“Never mind.” He picked up his rifle. “What I wanted to say is, I left this place with nothing but the clothes on my back. I ain’t ever took anything that didn’t belong to me, no matter what it looks like. And I ain’t ever told anybody what I know about Hidden Wolf. Not about the silver mine nor about the cave under the falls.”
“I never supposed you did.”
Liam’s brow drew together. “Still. I wanted it clear between us.”
Hannah said, “So now you did what you came to do.” It came out more abruptly than she meant it to.
He drew in a very deep breath and let it out again. “No, I cain’t say my business is done. I expect you heard already that I’m earning my living as a bounty hunter.”
“Yes,” said Hannah evenly. “A blackbirder. We heard.”
He avoided her gaze, leaning down to brush his leggings free of dirt. If he took offense at the term she had used, he hid it well.
“I’m looking for an African woman, about your age. Tracked her right to Hidden Wolf.”
“Is that so.”
“I expect she’s somewhere on the mountain, but I didn’t want to go any farther without permission. I know how Hawkeye feels about trespassers.”
He was asking her more than one question. Hannah’s fingers twitched slightly and she clasped them tighter against her sides. “You’d have to get permission from him or my father,” she said. “But I expect Elizabeth will have something to say about it too. You know how she feels about slavery.”
An eagle had begun circling the lake and Hannah watched it closely, afraid to look too long at Liam and let him see what she was feeling, anger and disappointment and worry too. She would keep that to herself for Selah Voyager’s sake.
“This is a special case,” Liam said.
He waited for the question that would let him explain away what he was doing, but Hannah was thinking of Curiosity, the expression on her face last night when she told them about putting Selah Voyager on the trail north. A special case. She had used exactly those words, thinking of the woman who had put her life in danger to bring a child into a free world.
With complete calm she said, “And how is this one special, Liam? More money on her head than usual?”
He let out a rough laugh. “I knew I couldn’t show up here without you standing in judgment on me.”
In her agitation, Hannah took a step away from him. “Maybe you’ve changed, but I haven’t. You didn’t think I’d approve of the way you earn your money, did you?”
His jaw set hard. “As I remember, your mother’s people took slaves now and then.”
“The Kahnyen’kehàka kidnapped children to adopt and took prisoners in battle and who they didn’t kill they kept as slaves, yes. And what does that have to do with this woman you’re after?” Her voice had gone rough with agitation, and she swallowed hard.
“I thought maybe you’d be fair-minded,” he said tightly. “And find out the facts before you condemned me. A man’s got to make a living. I ain’t ashamed.”
Hannah drew up to her full height and looked Liam directly in the face. What she saw there was anger and exasperation, but the longer she looked the more those things gave way to the guilt she had hoped to see. Guilt without penitence, but it was a start.
She said, “I’m ashamed for you.”
Liam flinched, but his voice was steady and low and completely cold. He said, “The woman I’m after put a knife in a man’s throat on the Newburgh dock. When I take her back she’ll be tried for murder and hung.”
“If she’s guilty,” Hannah said.
“She’s guilty.”
“Well, then, I suppose her owner won’t be pleased,” she said, hearing the bitterness in her voice. “Losing his investment to the gallows.”
“I don’t think he’ll mind much,” said Liam. “It was him she put the knife into. This one.” He took a hunting knife from a sheath on his belt. The carved ivory handle was grimy with dirt and dried blood. Hannah studied it for a moment and then she looked Liam directly in the eye.<
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“I hope she’s halfway to Montreal by now.”
There was a glittering in his eyes, anger as sharp as the knife in his hand. Liam said, “I’ll wager she’s not much closer to Montreal than I am. If that’s where she’s headed.”
Hannah began to turn away. “I’ll give your message to my grandfather and father.”
“Tell them that it won’t serve anybody if they stand in the way of the law.”
In her surprise, Hannah laughed. “I’d like to see you look Hawkeye in the eye and tell him what he owes the law. You’ve been away longer than I thought, if you believe that will get you anywhere.”
Liam turned his head away from her and said, “I have been gone enough years to put this place behind me. I can’t remember why I stayed as long as I did.”
He meant to hurt her, but Hannah swallowed it down and kept her voice steady. She said, “It was your home. Everybody needs one.”
She watched the column of muscles in his throat flex as he swallowed, and then he managed a smile. “Oh, I got a place. Went to housekeeping last fall. I’d like to finish my business and get back to my family.”
The words hung there between them, almost visible in the air.
“I can understand that,” Hannah said very softly. “I’d rather be home myself right now.”
Liam said, “Then I’ll say my farewells. In case we don’t meet again. Will you shake hands with me, Squirrel?”
It was the name that struck so hard, hearing her Kahnyen’kehàka girl-name out of his mouth. Hannah sucked in a breath and held it, felt her fists like stone at her side. When she took his hand he started at the cold; she felt the shock move up his arm. He was looking down at her, but she turned away without meeting his gaze and never looked back, not even when he called after her.
“Tell them I’ll wait at the trading post!”
When she had disappeared into the trees, Liam sat down and bent forward to cross his arms over his head. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced his breathing to slow. Every word she had said echoed in his head as loud as a gunshot.
Hannah. Oh, Christ.
One of the dogs pushed against his leg and nuzzled into the crook of his arm. Liam slung an arm around her neck and put his face against the fur that smelled of lake water and mud.
“So tell me, Treenie, do you think that could have gone any worse?”
She nuzzled him again and made sympathetic noises.
Liam sat up again and looked around himself. There was something on the stones, white and square: a letter. Hannah had left a letter for him.
It was a good while before he could make himself move and then Liam sat for a longer time looking at the handwriting.
Liam Kirby
At Lake in the Clouds
Paradise
On the west branch of the Sacandaga
New-York State
The handwriting of a young girl, slightly rounded and uneven. A letter from the Hannah that used to be, the one that was gone now, replaced by a woman he had never imagined. She looked so much like her mother, and it occurred to Liam that the dead did come back to life and walk the earth, in the form of the children they had left behind. On the few occasions he ever saw himself in a looking glass he could see his father’s face just beneath his own, and when Hannah looked at herself there was Sarah. Men had fought over Sarah.
Clouds passed overhead and sent shadows across the paper. Liam was cold and then warm again. It was Elizabeth who had taught him to read, back when she first opened her school; at this moment Liam wished she had never bothered.
He broke the wax seal and unfolded the paper, ran his palms over the creases to smooth it on his knee.
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 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
11th day of June, 1794
A sound came from deep in his chest, something wound so tight that if he let it go completely it might fill the world. Liam ran his hand over the paper again and again. If he had waited another month, even a week, maybe this letter would have reached him. All these years it had been waiting here for him.
He tried to remember back to the days before he walked away from the mountain, but it was so long ago that the boy he saw in his mind’s eye was a stranger to him. Impatient and angry, lonely and wanting to move, to go, to be anywhere else but the empty cabin at Lake in the Clouds.
Liam folded the letter and put it in his pack, slipped his rifle sling over his shoulder, and set out for the village.
Chapter 6
Just when Jemima Southern had given up all hope of finding an excuse to go to the village in order to get a better look at Liam Kirby, Isaiah Kuick realized that he was out of tobacco. Normally it would have fallen to Reuben to run this errand, but the boy had been sent down to the mill to scrub down the overseer’s lodgings, and so Isaiah did something out of the ordinary: he came into the kitchen.
Jemima was more than willing to put down her mending and take the coins, not from his hand but from the table where he put them. Without his mother in the room, Isaiah seemed unwilling to even look at her. Whether this meant she was a temptation to him or that he truly disliked her Jemima did not know, but for once she had something more interesting than Isaiah Kuick to consider. While he and Cookie discussed when Ambrose Dye might be back from Johnstown with the slaves who had been gone for the winter, Jemima contemplated which path to the trading post would give her the best chance of running into Liam Kirby. Otherwise he might leave Paradise before she ever had a chance to talk to him.
Once out of the house, she picked up her skirts and trotted, but she crossed paths with no one but old Mrs. Hindle, bent almost double under a load of deadwood and arguing loudly with herself. Jemima made a wide circle around her without slowing down.
The trading post was the logical place to find a traveler, but today there was just shiftless Charlie LeBlanc and Obediah Cameron, half-asleep in front of a game of skittles. Anna stood behind the counter sorting through a box of buttons, but seemed glad enough to see Jemima come through the door.
“Tobacco, is it? Fond of his pipe, is Isaiah Kuick. Now why is it he don’t come down here himself? Shy, is he?”
She was looking at Jemima out of the corner of her eye. Information about the widow’s son was a rare commodity, and one that Jemima would spend wisely. She considered how she might tell Anna what she wanted to know in return for news of Liam, but it was a tricky business; she could easily give away more than she got.
Jemima had just decided to keep silent when the door opened behind her and Anna let out her high shrill laugh.
“Liam Kirby!” She put down the button box with a rattle and came out from behind the counter.
Her screeching would have annoyed Jemima to the point of leaving, but then nobody could ask an impertinent question like Anna so she stepped back to watch and listen, fitting herself into the corner between dusty crates of T
urlington’s Balsam of Life while Anna walked right up to Liam to put both hands on his shoulders.
“Look at you. Ain’t you a sight.”
Liam was big, but then so was Anna; she barely had to look up to shout into his face.
“Grown into a man, and not hard on the eyes neither. Your hair’s come in right dark, ain’t it? And those fine blue eyes you got from your ma, Lord rest her. She was a handsome woman in her youth, and you take after her. Took you long enough to stop in and see old friends. Suppose you heard about me and Jed getting married, two old fools that we are. Next Saturday. You stay long enough and we’ll fix you up too. You come home to claim a bride?”
He flushed his irritation for the world to see, from the neck of his shirt to his hairline, an answer just as clear as words on a page and one that made Jemima’s stomach lurch into her throat.
“Cain’t say that I have.” He removed himself from Anna’s grip gingerly. “A man ain’t allowed more than one, according to the law. I’m here on business.”
“Now there’s some news. Liam Kirby married. I expect there’s more to tell, it’s been near ten years.” Anna pointed to a stool. “Sit yourself down over there by the fire—Charlie, you’ll grow roots in front of that skittles board if you don’t take care. Make some room now, Liam’s come to call and he’s got stories to tell. You remember Charlie, Liam, but what you don’t know is he finally found hisself a wife. Married Molly Kaes but the bloom is off the rose, plain enough. He spends more time in front of my fire than he does his own.”
“Now Anna—” Charlie began, but she cut him off.
“That there’s Obediah Cameron, you’ll remember him when he had hair. And here comes Miss Wilde—I’ll be with you in a minute, Eulalia—she’s a new face to you, but then we’ve got lots of them in Paradise these days. Keeps house for her brother. I expect you saw the Wilde orchards on your way in. Have you ever seen so many apple trees? Jemima Southern there—did you recognize her? All grown-up and thinking she can hide herself in plain sight. In service at the widow Kuick’s since she lost her folks to the quinsy. Bought the mill from John Glove, did the widow. You look like you swallowed your tongue, Jemima. Got nothing to say to Liam Kirby? If I recall correctly you were sweet on him at one time.”
