by Sara Donati
She was just tall enough to rest her head in the hollow spot between Elizabeth’s breasts. She smelled of wood smoke and growing things, and she trembled slightly, in fear or relief, Elizabeth could not tell. She only knew that her throat was tight with joy at this greeting, in spite of the news written clearly on Curiosity’s face.
Falling-Day murmured words of welcome to Elizabeth and to her daughter, who had come farther into the room to kneel next to the cot. Hannah pulled away, gently, and joined Many-Doves, picking up her book to find her place. Poor Richard’s Almanac, Elizabeth saw now.
Curiosity laid a hand on Elizabeth’s arm.
“How much longer?”
She lifted a shoulder, inclined her head. “Tonight, I’d say.”
“Where is Nathaniel?”
“He went to fetch Hawkeye.”
“But I thought—”
“Maybe you can stop him,” said Curiosity, “if you hurry.”
Headed down the path from Lake in the Clouds at a fast clip and lost in her worries, Elizabeth was taken by surprise at the arm that shot out of the dark behind the church and caught her up. Even knowing it was Nathaniel, a small cry of alarm escaped her, to be stifled immediately against his shirt.
He set her firmly on her feet and then pinned her up against the wall of the church. She was breathing hard; he kissed her, harder.
“Nathaniel!” she hissed, breaking away.
“I’m glad to see you home safe, Boots. Although I have to say your timing ain’t optimal.” He touched the corner of her mouth with his thumb and she caught his hand, held it there.
“Nathaniel, tell me you’re not here to break Hawkeye out of Anna’s pantry.”
He hushed her, pulling her farther away from the path. There were voices, coming closer. Men on their way to Axel’s tavern, where the noise indicated some party well under way. Elizabeth waited until the pressure of his fingers on her arm relaxed. Then she took his face between her hands and made him look at her.
“It will do us no good if they lock you up, too,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on his. “Come back home with me. Your grandfather will be asking for you.”
Nathaniel caught her hands and pushed them down, firmly. “He’ll be asking for my father, too, and I aim to make sure he’s there.”
“Please, be reasonable. There is no window big enough for him to climb through. Anna sleeps in the next room, and the tavern is right there—it’s impossible. They must have posted a guard.”
“Aye,” Nathaniel agreed with a grim smile. “Liam Kirby, asleep on a stool with his hat pulled over his eyes.”
Elizabeth tried to calm her voice, seeking frantically for that logic which would reach him. “Nathaniel, it sounds as though every man in the village is in the tavern.”
Bursts of singing came to them on the warm evening breeze, interrupted by raised voices and an occasional shouted laugh.
“They buried Southern today,” Nathaniel offered in explanation. “It’s an Irish wake they’ve got going on.”
“Oh, lovely, then they are in a rare mood. Think, please. Even if you manage it somehow, they will come looking for him—and for you—immediately.”
Nathaniel stared down at her sternly, his eyes narrowed.
Elizabeth knew that she was saying things he didn’t want to hear, but that he couldn’t deny. She recognized the expression on his face, although she had never seen him wearing it before. It was a look she knew too well: all her life, she had seen it on the faces of men when she asked yet another question, or made that final observation, the one that dug too deep and hit a nerve. Slowly, reluctantly, Elizabeth had begun to trust the fact that he liked her the way she was, that he could cope with a woman with a mind of her own without losing his sense of himself as a man. And now, here it was. That look.
She watched him struggle with it. He would either talk to her, and they would resolve this, or he would try to send her home.
The muscles in his throat began to work convulsively. His face, his beloved face, all angles and planes. The scar at the corner of his eye; the straight line of his brow. It all dissolved as she watched, anger and stubbornness giving way to something she had never imagined: desperation. The kind of bone-deep desperation that made other men—not Nathaniel, never Nathaniel—into little boys.
“Elizabeth.” His voice came harsh with the effort of it, of showing her this. “It’ll kill my father. It will kill him, not being there when Chingachgook walks the path. I know my father, Elizabeth. And I cannot leave him sitting in that gaol, and live with myself. Not tonight, not for another day. Don’t ask me to walk away from this, because I can’t.”
Elizabeth pressed a hand to her mouth. Then she said: “I will go talk to the judge. He cannot be so cruel as to keep Hawkeye from his father’s deathbed.”
He groaned in frustration. “Don’t you see? Kirby would raise an army to stop him.”
She searched his face for the truth. “Are things so far gone here, then? Do they hate us so much?”
He had no words for her; for once, Nathaniel had no comfort to offer. Elizabeth stood up straighter, and glanced toward the tavern.
“I will go in there and speak to Kirby. Perhaps I can appeal to his better instincts.”
“I can’t let you waltz into a room of drunken men with bloodshed on their minds. And it wouldn’t do any good anyway, Boots. You know that yourself.”
Elizabeth let her head drop back against the wall of the church. Above her, the dark shapes of the fir trees flexed against the night sky. For no reason she could understand, Elizabeth thought of Kitty’s mother hiding up in the branches of one of those trees for two days after the Kahnyen’kehàka war party had come to call, afraid to climb down and face the rest of her life after what she had learned about the cruelty of men, and how deep it could run. Some folks sit tight and let life happen to them, Curiosity had said to her once. No matter what the cost.
“But I do not,” Elizabeth murmured. “And never will I.”
The worry that etched Nathaniel’s face in deep lines gave way to sudden curiosity.
“Have you got a plan?”
Amazed to realize that she did indeed have a plan, Elizabeth nodded. “Can you raise enough of a fuss to empty the tavern? Get all of them out here for a quarter hour or so?”
One brow shot up, incredulous. “And what good will that do us?”
Elizabeth smoothed her hand over his shoulder. “Quite simple. While you are out here amusing all of them, I will be inside.”
The other brow went up, and with it, a flicker of a grin. “Elizabeth Middleton Bonner,” said her husband slowly. “Are you proposing to break a man out of gaol?”
“If you’ll explain to me how to force the lock, well, then. Yes. I suppose that is exactly what I am proposing.”
Nathaniel reached into his bullet pouch and pressed a knobby iron key into her hand.
“Where did you get this?”
He shrugged. “We’ve got some friends left in Paradise.”
“Axel.” She nodded. “And I know we can count on Anna to look the other way, if it comes to that.”
“It’s going to take more than a little luck to pull this off, Boots.”
“Pah.” She made a small flickering motion with her fingers. “Luck is for the unprepared and the mediocre. What we need is a plan. And careful timing. And quite possibly, a large gourd from Anna’s garden.”
Elizabeth thought that if she let herself contemplate the enormity of the task she had just taken on, she would begin to shake with fear, and so she spoke to him of the details. Nathaniel was already more himself: she could feel it in the way he ran his hands over her arms, see it in the distracted look on his face as they discussed timing, and decoys, and meeting places.
“We should wait another hour or so,” he said, when they had sketched it out between them. “Until they’re good and drunk.”
“You won’t burn anything down, will you?” She plucked at his sleeve anxiously.
She had an idea, oh, yes. Pinned against this wall with Nathaniel leaning over her, his warm breath stirring her hair and his fingers plucking gently, she had notions in her head that a year ago were beyond her imagining. The warm summer night and the smells of him, and the anxiety and excitement of what lay before them, all came together to hum in her veins. She lifted her face to him, knowing that he could read what was written there better than any words on a page.
With a small laugh, Nathaniel came in closer. He dropped his head so that his mouth hovered just over hers.
“You’re full of mischief tonight, ain’t you, Boots?”
Before she could protest, he had closed the gap between them. She spread her hands on his back and tangled her fingers in his hair and kissed him back, pressing herself to him. Two days without Nathaniel had reminded her what it was like to be alone. His shoulders flexed under her hands; she pressed her teeth to the skin of his neck, tasting his salt and sweat and wanting more, wanting all of him. But the combination of his hands on her breasts and the wall at her back struck a chord she could not ignore.
“This is the church,” she gasped when his mouth left hers to move to her ear. “Nathaniel! Perhaps—”
His hand slid inside her bodice, just as his lips closed over her earlobe.
“Nathaniel,” she whispered, pushing him away.
His thumb stopped its slow rotation on her nipple, and he lifted his head. “Boots?”
She pulled his head to her, kissed him hard. “There’s something sacrilegious about this.”
“Well, then,” he said thoughtfully. His hand continued on its quest beneath her skirt while he kissed the corner of her mouth, his tongue flickering. “Quote me something from the Bible, if that will help. Because I want you.”
She gave in with a laugh. Because she wanted to, because she wanted him. She let him bare her breasts to the night breeze. She took his kisses and gave them back, put her hands on him, greedy for the evidence of his desire. With his arms beneath her knees he lifted her against the wall, finding his way through the tangle of her skirt, his fingers pressing into her rounded flesh, seeking. He tilted her up and fit himself to her with a groan muffled against her arched neck.
So closely joined together that she dreaded ever having to let go, Elizabeth drank in the words he murmured at her ear, sounding for all the world like a prayer.
LII
They found a pumpkin in Anna’s garden that was just about big enough to serve as a stand-in for Hawkeye’s head, but they also found Jed McGarrity, who was using it as a pillow. Sound asleep with his fiddle cradled in his arms, he was snoring lightly and seemed not in the least uncomfortable.
“Maybe we should help him home,” Elizabeth suggested.
“No time,” Nathaniel reminded her. “And Nancy wouldn’t let him in, anyway. He smells like he climbed right into the schnapps bottle.”
“Is Jed difficult when he is inebriated?” she asked thoughtfully.
“There ain’t a mean bone in the man’s body.”
“Good, then maybe we won’t have to make do with the gourd.” When there was no reply to this suggestion, Elizabeth glanced up at Nathaniel. But his attention was elsewhere, on what was going on inside the tavern.
She put a hand on his arm. “Be careful.”
He grinned down at her, cupped her cheek in his hand. “You, too.” And then he disappeared around the corner to enter the tavern by its front door. Elizabeth wound her hands in her skirt to keep them from trembling, and she glanced at Jed McGarrity’s long face, half lit in moonlight. She crouched down next to him, shook him slightly.
“Hmmm?” He opened one eye and then closed it again. “Miz Elizabeth. Kind of you to come and call.”
She stifled a smile. “Jed, wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a bed?”
“Yas’m, but there ain’t one handy,” he mumbled.
“You stay put and I’ll find one for you. If you’re not fussy about where, exactly.”
He fumbled at his head for a moment, as if he had a hat to tip. “I ain’t a fussy man, miss. Thank you kindly.”
His snoring resumed just as the first shouting erupted from the tavern.
Liam had left a betty lamp alight on a pickle barrel when he went out to watch the fight, and Elizabeth was very glad of it as she threaded her way through the trading post, around wash-tubs, boxes of Daffy’s Elixir of Life, stacks of folded huckaback and dried tobacco leaves. The trading post was unnaturally quiet in the deep of the night, in contrast to the noise outside. It seemed that the men of Paradise enjoyed a fistfight. She just hoped they didn’t take it into their heads to join in. Elizabeth put that idea firmly away, and felt once again for the key in her pocket.
There was a window cut in the pantry door, a dark square as big as her hand. Elizabeth went up on tiptoe, but she could see nothing. With the sound of her own heartbeat so loud that she could barely concentrate, she fit the key to the lock, wincing at the small scraping noise.
“Nathaniel?” came a whisper.
“No, it’s Elizabeth.” She swung the door open and found Hawkeye standing there, fully dressed. He put out a hand to grab her shoulder, and leaning over, touched his forehead to her hair.
“By God,” he whispered. “I knew you two would come through.”
Overcome with a rush of affection, Elizabeth grasped his free hand, and pulled him into the room. His face was rough with beard stubble; his hair clung damply to his temples. Blinking and squinting in the light, he looked at first like a confused old man. Then he shook his head and his gaze, razor sharp, focused on Elizabeth.
“Is that Nathaniel out there fighting Kirby? Aye, I thought so. He’s been looking for an excuse for a while, but I guess he didn’t think it would come like this.” He paused, and ran a hand over his chin so that the bristles crackled. “My father?”
“He’s alive, but the women think he’s very close, Hawkeye. I’m sorry.”
He nodded, as if he had been expecting to hear worse. “Not too late, at least.”
She put out a hand. “We need a dummy of some sort for your cot, so they don’t realize right away—”
“No time, lass.” He shook his head. “I’m away up the mountain.”
Elizabeth knew he was right, but having come so far so quickly, she was suddenly almost paralyzed with worry. She forced herself to say it, anyway. “Go on, then, I’ll cope here.”
At the door, Hawkeye paused. “You’re a fine woman, Elizabeth. I’m proud to call you daughter.”
She pushed at him, her anxiety almost at the breaking point. “Go,” she said. “We’ll come after. Just go.”
He didn’t need more urging. Elizabeth watched him running across the garden, as elegant and quick as a deer in flight, his hair fluttering silver in the moonlight. He disappeared into the woods without a sound.
Drenched in sweat, she set off into the garden, listening as she went to the sounds of the fight out front.
If he had ever seen a sure thing, a fight worthy of a wager, this was it, thought Julian. Nathaniel Bonner in a white fury, and sober, against Billy Kirby with a half bottle of schnapps in him. Billy might weigh a few stone more, but it would do him little good tonight. More bad luck, to have put all his money into drink and cards before Bonner showed up. Up to that point, it had been a boring affair, this Irish wake. The memorial toasts for a man few had liked and fewer still would miss were only vaguely amusing; the singing had set more than one dog to howling. It was almost enough to make Julian appreciate the empty house he had waiting for him. He had been on the point of going when things got interesting.
Of course, Billy had brought the fight on himself. He could no more keep from bragging about tossing Hawkeye
in the gaol than he could stop breathing. Bonner, cold bastard that he was, hadn’t blinked. He just listened to Billy rant on and on, and then asked in a conversational tone if the sheriff had the balls to stand up with somebody his own size and age, or if it was only old men he felt safe taking on, and that at the end of a rifle. That stare of his was like a poke in the chest; drunk or sober, a man couldn’t walk away from it and call himself a man.
They had all trooped out after Billy, bellowing encouragement and calling out wagers. Drinking men would put coin on any absurdity in the name of friendship; sober men—or men who could handle their schnapps—could profit. If only a man had the necessary funds. But since the accident that had sent Moses to his comeuppance, with the old Indian to follow soon after, the judge had not handed over a copper penny. Hadn’t even shown his face at home. Julian still hadn’t figured out how to get past Galileo and into the money chest and he was feeling the pinch. But still, he couldn’t quite stay away from the fight. He thought Bonner would put Kirby down clean and neat; there might be a free round, afterward.
Fifteen minutes into it, it was clear that neatness wasn’t on Bonner’s mind. He had a long reach and hands like iron hooks, and he knew how to hurt a man without taking too much out of him. Standing aside from the crowd safe from the dust and the occasional spattering of blood, Julian might have enjoyed the show if he’d had anything to invest in it.
“Sweet Mary, Nathaniel ain’t even broke a sweat yet,” muttered Henry Smythe. In the flicker of the torches the crowd waved like flags, the ginger fuzz that covered Kirby’s back and chest streamed with sweat.
“Better Billy than you or me, eh?” Smythe edged closer to Julian. He smelled of boiled cabbage and wet wool.
“You’re in my way, old man.”
Axel stood a few yards away with all the weapons around him, a condition he had placed on this fight; he was a man who knew his clientele, after all. Julian moved in his direction, keeping his eyes on Bonner and Kirby.
They were circling, Kirby working his bloody fists in front of him as if he had no idea what they were for, although there was no lack of advice from the audience. Bonner didn’t have too many friends in this crowd, but he didn’t seem much to mind, one way or another. Shouts of support and jeers slid off him as slickly as Billy’s haphazard jabs.