Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

“What does it say?”

  “Many things, but the most important is this. Whatever rough justice Ambrose met he deserved. They should not hang for it.”

  “Hang.” Hannah echoed the word, hollow-sounding and harsh. “You think Jemima would—”

  “Probably not,” he said, laying his head down again. “She would not throw away so much capital, not even to get back at you. Miss Bonner, I am feeling very faint so please listen. I did Cookie and the others a great wrong, but this way perhaps I can redeem myself a little, in their eyes at least. No harm should come to any of them. You will use the letter, if it comes to that?”

  “Yes.” Hannah nodded. “If I must I will use it.”

  There was so much Hannah didn’t understand, but another part of her, the part that was a healer first saw the tripping pulse in his throat and knew that he would not stand any more strain.

  And still he crooked a finger until she bent her head closer and took in the smell of him: hot sweat, sweet decay.

  “You still don’t know why I am asking this of you,” he whispered. “Cookie was not the only person wronged by Ambrose Dye,” he said, his voice trailing away. “You will find out soon enough, if my guess is right.”

  The letter was two sheets folded and sealed with wax, under which he had written in a neat hand: “I, Isaiah Simple Kuick, sound of mind and body, do hereby swear by the Almighty God and all that is Holy that what I have put down on these pages is true. Witness to my signature: Rebecca Kaes, of Paradise on this 24th day of April 1802.”

  Becca had signed in a round hand. On the other side, where an address would have been written, he had copied out some lines:

  Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;

  If it could speak as well as spy,

  This were the worst, that it could say,

  That being well, I fain would stay,

  And that I loved my heart and honour so,

  That I would not from him, that had them, go.

  When Hannah left Isaiah’s chamber an hour later with the unopened letter in her pocket, her patient had fallen into a sleep so deep and pure that Hannah took Becca aside to warn her what was to come.

  Becca’s face filled with a terrible sadness. Her eyes reddened, and Hannah felt a great warmth toward the girl, who had found a way to be a friend and comfort to a difficult and tormented man.

  “Should I wake the widow?” She plucked nervously at her sleeve. “She’ll want to take leave of him. Won’t she?”

  “You must do as you see fit,” Hannah said. “But I would be surprised if he woke again. If you know where his wife might be …” She let the sentence drift away.

  Becca blinked like a confused child, as if she had forgotten that her master had a wife.

  “His wife, Jemima,” Hannah said. “Jemima should be with him.”

  Becca nodded, and left her there on the doorstep.

  Chapter 41

  A summer storm drew itself around the village of Paradise and swaddled it as tightly as a fussy newborn. Rain, warm and soft, washed the dust from the leaves of the apple trees in Nicholas Wilde’s orchard and wet the heads of the mourners gathered around his sister’s grave. Rain turned the footpaths to mud that clung to shoework and made hems drag heavy. All over the village doors that would normally stand open in the summer were closed tight against the rain.

  Even indulgent mothers who sent the youngest out to play in warm rain to save the trouble of a weekly wash closed their ears and ignored the complaints of bored children. Every parent in the village divided their nightmares between Indian raids and canker rash, and took the rain as a sign from God that they were meant to keep their children close.

  In the households where the rash had already struck, mothers tended feverish children and waited for the next visit from Dr. Todd or Hannah Bonner, starting up at the sound of human footsteps as if they were angel wings. By the third day of the fever, when it was clear who would survive and who might not, the rhythm of the visits changed. The two doctors divided their time among four households: the Camerons, where old Isaac scrabbled for a hold on life and his grown sons drank away their fear, and the families where scarlet fever had put down taproots: LeBlanc, Ratz, and Hindle.

  The LeBlancs were the family in the most trouble. The newborn daughter had died on her second day but Molly, ever persistent and reluctant to leave her boys, rallied once and then fell into a last delirium that seemed to take no end. The little cabin filled up with the stink of childbed fever and the boys—even the two youngest still feverish with the canker rash—could not be kept inside. They climbed out windows to stand crying in the rain, and ignored their grandmother’s threats and pleas alike.

  A fine mist settled and stayed at Lake in the Clouds, threading through trees and turning familiar corners into caves to be explored. It seemed as if Elizabeth had used some witching spell to call down the rain and mist to bind them all to the mountain. Isolated as they were from the village, the only news came to them when Hannah returned home on a rare visit. It was from Hannah they heard the names of the dead: Isaiah Kuick, Esther Greber, Prudence Ratz, Isaac Cameron.

  Lily followed Elizabeth around, talking and drawing and taking lessons in arithmetic and history without complaint when it could not be avoided. She even practiced her knitting and pretended to enjoy it, and still her mother didn’t seem to take note of how unusually cooperative and good she was being. It was aggravating, but it also frightened Lily, the way her mother seemed to dream-walk her way through the day. Lily went to her father and was comforted, but it was Many-Doves who seemed to understand best of all what was wrong and could quiet Lily’s fears.

  “Your little brother sits heavy on her lap just now,” Many-Doves told her. “She doesn’t know what to do with her sorrow, and she has let her anger turn inward, where it festers.”

  The question Lily asked was the one Daniel would ask when she related all this to him. “Will she get better when the epidemic is past?”

  “No,” Many-Doves said, pausing in her work to look Lily directly in the eye. “That will be no more than a beginning.”

  Nathaniel spent the wet dark days of the epidemic mending broken tools and making a new stretching frame for Many-Doves, keeping a watchful and worried eye on his wife, and waiting for his eldest daughter’s next visit.

  At night he held a sleepless Elizabeth in his arms. They spoke of many things, all of them unimportant. When he tried to turn the conversation to other matters she stiffened.

  “A quarantine is nothing unusual, Nathaniel,” she said to him. “Even a self-imposed quarantine. It is the sensible thing to do.”

  “You know, Boots,” he said in a conversational tone that he hoped would hide his frustration. “You know, just to use the word ‘sensible’ doesn’t make a thing true.”

  She sat up in the dark. He could just make out the shape of her face and back, but when he reached out she moved away.

  “Once again,” she said firmly. “Let me say this. From everything Hannah has told us this is not a very bad outbreak. It is a matter of days, nothing more, and then we can go on in our normal fashion.”

  Nathaniel said, “Why do you send the children to their beds when their sister comes home? You know she wouldn’t come near us if she had any thought it might be dangerous.”

  “It’s merely a precaution,” Elizabeth said wearily. “Nothing more.”

  On the morning of the fourth day Jed McGarrity came up the mountain just as the sun showed itself. Elizabeth went very still when they heard the sound of his hello from out front, but this time she was not alone. Nathaniel went out to greet Jed sure in his gut that the man was here to tell them that Hannah was sick with the canker rash. But the sight of McGarrity’s easy smile eased his fears. Nathaniel drew in a deep breath and let it out again.

  “You come with news, Jed, or you just out for a walk?”

  “I got some news,” McGarrity said, blinking up at Nathaniel. “But mostly it’s another matter. It might be best if we sat
down with Hawkeye and Runs-from-Bears to have us this talk. So I don’t have to tell the story more than once.”

  “A messenger come late yesterday evening from Johnstown,” Jed began when they had gathered around the table. “With word from the circuit judge.”

  Of all the things Jed might have come to say, this was the last thing Nathaniel had imagined. The men looked at each other, and then Hawkeye spoke up.

  “It ain’t time for O’Brien to come through yet, is it? What does he want, Jed?”

  McGarrity was a man with a long face that always looked worried, even when he was smiling. Dour, Nathaniel’s mother would have called him. A true Scot. She would have said it with a wink, good Scotswoman that she was.

  “You’re not going to like it much. Seems like the Kuick widows have sworn a complaint against your Hannah, serious enough to bring him here out of rotation. He’ll be arriving today sometime, and he’s looking to hold an inquiry before he goes ahead and charges her.”

  Elizabeth gasped softly. She was listening from the doorway, her arms wrapped around herself.

  “Charges her with what?” Hawkeye said, calm as ever but with a flash of fire in his eye that nobody at this table could overlook.

  “Didn’t say exactly.” Jed studied his hands where he had spread them out on the table. “But I expect it’s got something to do with the robbery at the mill.”

  “Being it was Indians that did it,” Runs-from-Bears said to nobody in particular. “I suppose that means we’ll all be hauled up in front of O’Brien. Don’t matter that every one of us was in that trading post while the whole thing happened.”

  “Right now it’s just Hannah,” Jed said. “Now don’t take this the wrong way, Bears, but I’ve been meaning to ask—”

  “The men who broke into the mill house weren’t Mohawk,” Runs-from-Bears said. “And I can’t tell you what tribe they are from their tracks. It’s a reasonable question, Jed. I ain’t about to take offense.”

  McGarrity looked confused, as if he liked the answer Runs-from-Bears had given him, but wasn’t sure it matched the question he asked.

  Nathaniel said, “Did O’Brien tell you to take Hannah into custody?”

  Jed met his eye, and nodded.

  “What’re you planning to do?”

  “Why, nothing,” said Jed, leaning back in his chair so far that it creaked. “I figure the messenger got that part of it wrong, is how I’ll tell it. Given we’re all caught up in the canker rash and all, and Hannah’s running from sickbed to sickbed. And if O’Brien don’t like it, why then he can find hisself another constable. I never wanted the damn job in the first place.”

  There was a longer silence, and then Runs-from-Bears said, “What do you think is behind all this, Jed?”

  McGarrity pushed his hands through his hair in a rough gesture. “I been asking myself that question all night. To tell the truth, looks to me like this is all Jemima in a temper. The widow let herself be dragged in gladly enough—Lord knows the woman would pick a fight with a polecat—but this is Jemima’s work. I never have understood what she’s got against your Hannah but whatever it is, it finally came to a boil.”

  In the sleeping loft the children began to argue in a whisper that could be heard in every corner of the cabin.

  Elizabeth called up to them. “Lily. Daniel. Ethan. You must keep silent if you will listen, or I’ll send you to Many-Doves.”

  Daniel’s head appeared over the banister, his cheeks bright with color. “Sorry, Ma, but we can’t keep quiet anymore. There’s something we got to tell you about Jemima Southern.”

  “Jemima Kuick,” Lily said, standing up next to her brother.

  The men looked at each other, and then Nathaniel said, “Come on down here, then, and say what you got to say.”

  Ethan hung back with Elizabeth while the twins told the story, standing at attention in front of the gathered men. More than once a sigh escaped Elizabeth. When she met Nathaniel’s gaze he saw the question there he was asking himself: their two youngest had been carrying this burden for weeks, how was it that they hadn’t known something was wrong?

  “Now let me get this straight,” Hawkeye said when they had finished, and the twins went very still. “Jemima threatened to go after your sister if you told what you saw at Eagle Rock that day.”

  They nodded.

  “And did you tell anybody?”

  “No,” Lily said, biting her lip. “We never did. I know we should have told about the trespassing—”

  Hawkeye held up a hand to stop her. “I’m not worried about that right now. What I’m wondering is, what set Jemima off if it wasn’t the two of you talking. Just a robbery don’t seem like enough, unless it was Hannah who did it and we know that ain’t the case.”

  From the doorway Elizabeth said, “It’s the loss of the money. The loss of the money and her husband all at—” She faltered, and Nathaniel saw some understanding come into her face. “No,” she corrected herself. “It is the money, it will always be that for Jemima. But this doesn’t have to do with Isaiah Kuick.”

  “Then what?” said McGarrity.

  Elizabeth lifted a shoulder. “I couldn’t say how, but I wonder if this doesn’t have something to do with Liam Kirby.”

  Jed threw an uneasy look in the twins’ direction. “Jemima got what she wanted from Liam Kirby, it seems to me.” His voice trailed away to a rough cough. “I suppose he could be hanging around these parts, keeping himself out of sight. Hannah hasn’t said anything about seeing him, has she?”

  Elizabeth sent Nathaniel a questioning look, but he had turned his attention to a callus on the heel of his hand, his mouth set in a deep frown. In fact, none of the men seemed eager to comment on Liam Kirby.

  “No,” Elizabeth said. “I can tell you for a certainty that Hannah has not seen or heard from Liam since your wedding party back in the spring. I must be mistaken about Liam. We will find out soon enough what moved Jemima to file that complaint, I suppose.”

  Jed McGarrity stood up slowly. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Not any of it, but O’Brien’s on his way, and your Hannah will have to answer his questions. Don’t see any way around that. And before I forget, there’s one more thing I come to say. Mrs. Bonner, if I could have a word with you alone, I’d appreciate it.”

  Nathaniel went looking for Elizabeth expecting an argument, or at the very least, some hard questions about Liam Kirby. She was already on the verge of figuring out for herself what Nathaniel and his father had agreed not to tell her, quite yet: Liam Kirby was in hiding on the mountain again, but he wasn’t looking for runaways; just the opposite. Somehow or another he and Manny had hooked up and decided to take the matter of Ambrose Dye into their own hands.

  The question she would ask first was the hardest one: Why would Manny be working together with the man who was responsible—at least in part—for his wife’s death? The answer was, of course, that Liam hadn’t been responsible and, in fact, the opposite might just be true. He hadn’t been able to save Selah but he had saved the rest of the runaways by simply keeping his mouth shut when Cobb was examining their papers.

  If Nathaniel laid all this out for Elizabeth, she was likely to take a musket and go off in search of Liam to get the answers she’d want. He could only hope she didn’t figure things out for herself before he could find a way to open up the subject with her.

  The sight of Ethan standing white-faced by the window put all thought of Liam Kirby out of Nathaniel’s head.

  “It is your choice,” Elizabeth was saying. “You may go if you need to be with her, Ethan, but for your own well-being I hope you will stay here with us.”

  “What’s this about?”

  Elizabeth jumped at the sound of his voice and sent him a flustered and embarrassed look.

  “Kitty is come down with the scarlet fever,” she said. “Richard sent word with Mr. McGarrity.” On her face he could see what she did not want to say in front of Ethan: that Richard feared for her life, and tho
ught her son should be with her.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “But—” Elizabeth began.

  “Get your things together and go wait for me on the porch,” Nathaniel said to Ethan in as gentle a voice as he could manage.

  When Ethan had left them Nathaniel said, “You go too far, Elizabeth. You can’t keep the boy away from his mother when she asked for him.”

  She stood suddenly, bright anger flashing across her face. “It is for his own good that I tried,” she said. “And I might have succeeded, if you hadn’t interfered.”

  Nathaniel forced himself to take a deep breath, and then another. Elizabeth was trembling as if she feared he might raise a hand to her, and in some part of his mind Nathaniel knew that the anger on his face had given her that idea.

  She said, “Let me go in his place. He is my brother’s son, Nathaniel. I can’t let him expose himself to such danger.”

  “It ain’t your choice, Boots,” Nathaniel said, and walked away before he said anything else.

  She came running to the door just as he was about to close it behind himself, her face streaked with tears, and watched from the porch as he walked away with Ethan at his side.

  Hannah had gone with so little sleep for so long that she was not surprised to find that she had lost the habit. Richard might order her to get a few hours’ rest, and she might even lie down on the workroom cot and feel the room reel around her from exhaustion, but sleep still evaded her.

  Upstairs Ethan was sitting by Kitty’s bedside. He stayed through fever convulsions and delirium that would have scared most children away. He stayed because every now and then Kitty was clearheaded enough to recognize him and to say a few words before she fell away again into her fever dreams.

  Hannah wanted to go home to Lake in the Clouds. It was a simple thing, really. She would go out to the stable where Strikes-the-Sky kept watch and waited for her, and she would ask him to take her home. The urge was so strong that Hannah found herself standing by the door before she remembered that she was alone in this house with a dead infant, a dying woman, and a little boy.