by Sara Donati
Falling-Day, her face like a mask: “But I sent her back home to you, hours ago.”
Elizabeth gasped. “Her book?”
In the pale light of the moon, Many-Doves’ face alive with fear.
“It was left behind in the schoolhouse.”
LVI
There is nothing to fear in the dark, Hannah’s great-grandfather had always told her. Only O’seronni fear what is not there. She had spent all her life on this mountain; her Kahnyen’kehàka half was not afraid. Her other half, the white half, could be silenced for the moment. This errand would not take long, and she would be back in her own bed with the book under her pillow.
Hannah felt again for the key in her pocket. She had taken it from its nail near the door, and without asking. Tomorrow she would have to answer for that. Grandmother would be very angry with her; she didn’t dare think about what her father would have to say.
Elizabeth might be angry, too, but she would understand, in the end. It was the first book Hannah had ever owned, her very own. And they had not seen what she had seen: Jemima Southern’s eyes round with envy, and wanting. Jemima didn’t care about bones of the arm or the flow of blood, but she wanted anything Hannah had, and the Southern farmstead was closest to the school. Hannah wanted to get her Anatomy before it could disappear.
In the moonlight, the schoolhouse echoed with remembered voices, dark and quiet as a fallow field. Her hands trembled as she lit a candle.
She found it in the study, on the desk. Someone—Jemima?—had opened it to an illustration of a chest in which the bone had been cut away and the muscles and ribs peeled back neatly to show the heart. Hannah had seen more than her share of blood: both of her grandmothers were healers, and neither of them had ever had the habit of sending curious little girls away. But these pictures had nothing in common with broken bones and gashes and trap wounds. Hannah had planned to grab the book up, lock the door, and speed away home to her bed, but she paused to run her finger over the drawing.
It was lovely and quiet here. The little room with its neat rows of books was hers, for the moment. Hers, and nobody else’s.
Hannah pulled the door firmly closed. A shawl was draped over the chair; it was thick and warm, and it had Elizabeth’s scent. She pulled it around her shoulders against the chill. The desk was too high for her to sit over the book comfortably, so Hannah sat cross-legged on the rag rug with her feet tucked under. Bent over the book in her lap, she lost herself in the secrets of the human heart.
In time she turned the page, and then, after a while, the next. The candle burned steadily while she read, but she had no sense of time passing. When the print began to swim, she rubbed her eyes and forced them to focus.
Hannah fell asleep with her cheek against a drawing of the arteries of the neck. She did not wake when the candle sputtered and went out; she never heard the sound of the door opening in the other room.
Liam cantered through the village, filling the air with his cawing: “Fire! Fire! Fire at the schoolhouse!” Men began pouring out of Axel’s tavern before he had even started away up Hidden Wolf.
Billy Kirby, thought Julian as the village erupted into action. With his shattered mouth and pride to match, there was no doubt about who had taken the torch to the schoolhouse. The idiot would go to gaol for this, but worse, the village would stand behind the Bonners, now.
Julian had no intention of sharing credit with Billy Kirby for a crime he hadn’t even contemplated—arson was not his style, so inelegant—so he took the bucket that was shoved into his arms and ran with the others for the schoolhouse. There was nothing like a fire to sober men up.
If a man had time to stop and admire it from a safe distance, a building burning in the night was a beautiful thing. The flames were well established on the west end of the schoolhouse: they shot upward from an open window, a strange reversed lightning intent on laying the heavens open. At the front of the building, window glass glittered like hungry yellow eyes. Julian was reminded of a leopard he had seen once in a cage in a London whorehouse, pacing, pacing.
People were pouring in from every direction. Women, barefooted and in nightdresses with babies in their arms. Children shivering in the cold. Men, many of them still in the clothes they had worn to the school recital in the evening. There was no movement toward a bucket line: it was out of control, and one splash of lake water at a time would be no use at all.
The judge came galloping up, his white hair unbound and fluttering. He flung himself from the saddle and stood before Julian, heaving for breath. With one hand he held the reins of the terrified horse and with the other he grabbed his son’s shoulder and dug in his fingers, hard.
“I hope to the Almighty God that you had nothing to do with this, Julian.”
A sudden bellowing saved him a long and tedious explanation. O’Brien, coming out of the woods, was shouting and pointing toward the fire.
“The Mohawk girl!” he roared, waving his hat. “Saw her go in a couple of hours ago, don’t know if she came out.”
“Lord Almighty,” the judge groaned. “Are you sure?”
“There was candlelight on the east end, an hour ago.”
“Which Mohawk girl?” Julian asked. And getting no answer, he grabbed O’Brien by the collar and swung him around forcibly. “Which Mohawk girl?”
The old man squinted up at him. There was ash in his white hair.
“Does it matter?” he asked, jerking away. “Wake up, man. She’s cooked, whoever she is.”
Wake up. Julian stared at his father, and his father stared back.
Julian shook his head, trying, for once, to do what was being asked of him, although what he wanted was to sleep. To go to sleep and push the image out of his head: Many-Doves beating on the door, her hair dancing in the flames. Because, Julian realized with cold horror, because the door had a lock, and the key was in it. He could see it. Billy Kirby, damn his soul to a hell like the one he had created, Billy Kirby had set the fire and locked the door.
In the frantic light of the fire, Martha Southern was holding her girl while she screamed, endlessly. A horse screamed in counterpoint, and went crashing off toward the lake. On the far end of the schoolhouse, a window shattered and a swirl of cinders went into the night sky like a flock of tropical birds in unlikely colors.
Wake up.
Just unlock the door. Just turn the key.
He walked away. His father, deep in furious debate with O’Brien, took no notice. There was a shawl on the ground and he picked it up. Ten feet from the door, the hair on his head rose to the heat. The door was hot to the touch; he used the shawl to turn the key, and felt the lock give with a sigh.
From the corner of his eye, Julian caught movement: two riders, bent for hell down the mountainside.
He kicked the door open, and ran into the schoolhouse.
He had always taken a secret pleasure in color, and so in spite of his terror—the kind of deep fear that opens up the bowels and makes the blood run thin—Julian saw how exquisite it was: the flames moved through the room with a seductive and terrifying symmetry. Crouched on the floor in the middle of its roaring, watching the fire weave and prance, Julian recognized nothing about this place, as if he had never been here before.
Because he hadn’t. He had never been anywhere like this; of that much he was sure. Of that, and the fact that his skin was stretching and rising, and that the floor was burning his feet through his boots. Coughing explosively into the shawl, he could not remember why he had come into this place. He was alone in the screaming fire, and it would kill him if he didn’t move. Whatever it was he had been looking for was not here.
Off to his right was a door: intact. On the other side of that door there would be air to breathe, and cool darkness.
Julian yanked the door open and in response the fire at his back rose and roared like an animal. He slammed the door shut, and almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Then he turned, and scanned the room.
Sitting on the floor in the corner was
Nathaniel Bonner’s daughter, her arms wrapped around a book. She was rocking, her eyes blank and blind with terror. The only light was the leaping red and gold reflected in the little window above the desk; that meant, he realized with some quieter, rational part of his mind, that above them the roof was on fire. He could open the door and take her through it, or they would die here together.
His mind had hitched down to a slow, uneasy trot. He thought of Elizabeth; and for the first time in days, he thought of Kitty. He had come in here to save another man’s wife, and found Bonner’s daughter instead. There was an irony there, and one he knew he would appreciate if only his mind would start working.
She looked up at him, her eyes like cold coals.
Julian picked her up. “Time to go,” he wanted to say, but his throat burned and all he produced was an explosion of coughing. She buried her face against him, folding her body small and tight. Her book was wedged into his chest, its corners digging into his ribs. He realized suddenly that he had never held a child before in his life.
There was an explosion of glass, and Julian jerked as a shard lodged itself in his cheek. He turned, a long, slow process, and found Nathaniel Bonner trying to jam himself through a window that would accommodate only half of him. Blood dripped from his hands and ran down his forehead.
“Give her to me!” He held out his arms.
Julian looked down at the child.
“For the love of God, man!”
He put Hannah into her father’s arms.
And they were gone, leaving behind only the window sash rimmed with shards like bloody teeth. Julian stood for a moment, looking out. There in the night, figures danced and contorted in the light of the fire. His father, screaming for him to come.
For once in his life, Julian simply obeyed. He opened the door and found that the fire had come closer: a wall of it between him and the exit, beckoning and calling for him as his father was screaming outside in the night.
Julian ran through the wall of smoke and flame and out the building that heaved and groaned behind him, trying to hold his breath and failing, taking in long, fiery breaths as he would swallow a bitter medicine put off too long. He ran into the open, and onward. From one side, he had the sense of a man’s form launching at him, and then it hit him full force and he was on the ground. Rough hands slapped at his back and head.
Someone flipped him over: the pockmarked Indian, staring down at him. Over his shoulder, the last thing Julian saw was his father, and then, his sister’s face, Madonna-white and stained with ash and terror.
They carried Julian to the Southerns’ cabin, where Nathaniel and Hannah had already been passed into the care of the women. When Falling-Day had convinced Elizabeth that the little girl’s injuries were minor, and Elizabeth had spent some time rocking Hannah while she wept, she went to the corner where Many-Doves was tending Nathaniel’s cuts.
She was digging shards of window glass out of a gash on his lower arm. Other cuts on his head and arms and shoulders had been cleaned and stanched, but this was the worst.
“Let me,” Elizabeth said, putting her hands on Many-Doves’ shoulder.
There was a sheen of sweat on his brow, but Nathaniel shook his head. “This ain’t much, Boots. Falling-Day will sew it up. Go on to your brother.”
Many-Doves got up. “Fresh water,” she said, taking her bowl with her. Elizabeth caught her hand in passing and squeezed it thankfully. Then she glanced into the small room where they had put Julian on the bed. In between the racking coughs, there were voices: Martha and Curiosity, her father.
“Elizabeth,” Nathaniel said, holding out his free arm. She went down on her knees next to him and he pulled her in close. “He can’t live long. You know that?”
She pushed her face against his neck, and nodded.
“Then go on to him,” he said. He was looking at Hannah, who had fallen to sleep in Falling-Day’s arms. “If he can still hear you, tell him I said thank you.”
Axel passed her at the door, and stopped when she asked him where he was going.
He sent her a sideways glance, and then frowned at the hat in his hands. “He’s asking for Kitty, and her father. I’ll go fetch them.”
“But it could not be good for Kitty, in her condition—the sight of him like this—”
The old man grimaced. “That’s what Curiosity said, too, but what choice is there?”
Elizabeth drew in a deep breath, and nodded.
“If you were wondering.” Axel’s head came up, and he met her eye. “Runs-from-Bears and some of the men went after the Kirbys. I expect they’ll bring ’em back in short order.”
“But not Liam!” Elizabeth said, grasping Axel by the sleeve. “It was Liam who came to warn us.”
Axel’s eyes had a strange, cold glitter to them. “If the boy’s innocent, he won’t suffer for his brother’s sins. But you’ll note, Miz Elizabeth, that nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him since.”
Because she could not deny this, Elizabeth tried to think of some reasonable explanation, but a new volley of coughing was rolling through the room like the sound of cloth tearing. She went in to her brother.
The char and blisters that ran from the side of his head down over Julian’s left shoulder and arm were hard to look at, but it was his color which struck most forcibly. His face was ashwhite against the pillow slip, but his mouth was an incongruous cherry-red, as if he had made himself up for a masquerade. Curiosity was wiping away the vomit and blood, but the color remained. His garish lips stretched in a grimace over his teeth; his nostrils flared, and then he erupted into that cough, a sound that no human being should be capable of making. She did not know where to touch him, and so Elizabeth stood across the bed from her father and did Julian the favor of not looking away.
He inhaled in a long, racking wheeze and opened his eyes. “Hurts,” he whispered.
“Yes, child.” Curiosity leaned in next to Elizabeth and gently laid a cloth, damp and pungent-smelling, on the worst of the burns on his neck. His face contorted and then relaxed. She held up a tin cup and he made a clumsy effort to bat it away.
Finally his eyes focused on his father. “Kitty? Is she coming?”
The judge nodded.
Elizabeth leaned in closer. “Julian?”
She waited until the coughing passed, trying not to see the smears of blood and cinders that Curiosity wiped from his chin.
“Julian, we—Nathaniel and I, and Falling-Day, and Bears and Many-Doves, all of us. We wanted to thank you—”
Elizabeth wanted to say other things, but she did not know where to start. She wanted to scream and weep, but she was afraid that if she did, she would not know how to stop.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“New lungs,” he wheezed. And miraculously, a sour grin, the one she had had from him every day of his life, he gave to her now in his last hour.
“I wish that it were in my power.”
“The mountain,” he said. “Give back the mountain.”
She started. Glancing up at her father, she saw the shock draining what was left of his color.
“Julian—” the judge began, but the coughing started again.
On her father’s face Elizabeth saw something small and old. She wondered what he saw in her own face, which felt to her as if it must be made of glass, ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
There was a sudden silence in the other room, and the Witherspoons appeared at the door. Kitty stood there wrapped in a cape that could not hide her shape, holding the straining edges together over her belly with fingers so tense and white that it would not have surprised Elizabeth to see them snap off. Behind her Mr. Witherspoon was speaking to Nathaniel.
Kitty came forward to look into Julian’s face. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then the coughing took over again. Impassive, she watched him convulse with it. Elizabeth could not bear to see it, and so she looked away.
When he could talk again, Julian’s voice
was less than it had been even a few minutes earlier.
“Will your father—” he began, and then again the long pause, much longer now, while he brought up more of his lungs. When he finished, his voice was so faint that Elizabeth was sure, at first, that she had misheard. Then he repeated himself:
“Will he marry us right now?”
Elizabeth met the judge’s shocked gaze, and then she turned to Kitty, whose whole attention was on Julian. There were two spots of hectic red, high on her cheekbones.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Julian—” began the judge, with an uncomfortable look toward Kitty. “Are you sure?”
“My child,” Julian said. “It is my child. Is that not so, Kitty?”
“It is,” she hissed softly, and smiled. Elizabeth felt suddenly faint, and she reached for the headboard to steady herself.
Mr. Witherspoon cleared his throat. “But what of Richard?”
Kitty’s stare, as furious and burning as the blaze that had brought them to this place, silenced him. She said: “We may never see Richard Todd again.”
With shaking hands, Mr. Witherspoon opened his prayer book and began his second marriage service of the day. Curiosity took the signet ring from Julian’s uninjured hand, and when it was over, Kitty wore it, clenching her fist to keep the ring from falling off.
Elizabeth kissed Kitty’s cold white cheek, and then she leaned down to kiss her brother. He smelled of vomit and singed hair and blistered flesh, and her stomach rolled and heaved. She wanted to say comforting things, to tell him that he was ending his life well, and honorably, and that she was proud of him. But her own throat constricted and she fought with tears as he fought for breath.
His whisper caught her up, kept her captive with her ear near his mouth.
“Done now. Legal.”
“Yes.”
His eyes rolled in pain as he struggled to talk.
“Right thing to do.”
“Yes,” she said again, nodding fiercely.
Her brother whispered: “The rest of the land.” His eyes fixed on hers. “Safe now, from you.”