by Sara Donati
Elizabeth realized that her mouth had fallen open, and she closed it with a snap. But before she could gather her thoughts, her aunt was off again.
“It is very awkward, indeed. I have no sense of the girl—she seems as fragile as blown glass on the surface, but I suspect there is a strong will in there, somewhere. I certainly hope there is, at least, or Richard Todd may well find a way into your father’s pockets in the end.” Her blue eyes flashed as she said this.
“Aunt, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Do you not? I think you must. Don’t pretend with me, Lizzie, not with me. I know your father too well; I knew your poor brother, too, and having met Dr. Todd—in quite remarkable circumstances I’m sure you’ll agree—I see how you were caught up here in men’s games. You have managed to extricate yourself—and well done, too, I will admit.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said, suppressing a smile.
“But Kitty sits downstairs, a new widow with the key to your father’s heart and property at her breast, and I do not doubt that Richard Todd will see that as clearly as I do.”
“Whatever did he say to you to lead you to such a conclusion?”
Aunt Merriweather began to twist and turn the rings on her hands. “It was not so very much, at least it would not seem so much to anyone else. He said that a woman imprudent and impetuous enough to elope with a backwoodsman could not be a proper overseer and steward of this land—” She glanced out the window. “When I heard those words from him, I knew that he either did not know you at all—unlikely, given the small society here, and the fact that he pursued you for so long—or that he preferred to misrepresent you to the world to further his own ends. It was outrageously insolent of him, too, to make such pronouncements about his betters, and in public.”
Elizabeth smoothed her skirt under her hands, and sought the right tone. “But Aunt,” she said. “Richard’s interest has always been very specifically in Hidden Wolf—the mountain. I do not believe that he has designs on the rest of my father’s holdings. All of the trouble has been because that mountain is in that part of my father’s property which he deeded to me—upon my marriage.”
She wished for the power to keep from flushing, even as she felt the color rising on her neck and face. From the way her aunt’s mouth curled down at one corner Elizabeth knew that none of the intrigues of how and why she had married had gone unnoticed, and also, more strangely, that her aunt’s sensibilities had not been fatally insulted. Because she could not resist, Elizabeth remarked on this.
“I expected your disapprobation,” she said softly.
“Because you ran off into the wilderness with Nathaniel Bonner?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said slowly. “And because of the way I secured my claim to the property. All of this—” She gestured out the window. “All of my life now, so different from what you hoped for me, I think.”
Aunt Merriweather’s bright blue eyes could be hard, but her expression now was not an unkind one. “Are you happy about the child you carry? About the man who is the father of your child?”
“I am, yes. I am very happy.”
“Then I see no sense in criticizing you for living a life different from the one you would have had in England. This is not England, after all—so much I have learned on this journey. No, the truth is, Elizabeth, that I am a bit envious. Do not smile, you insolent girl, when I reward you with a confession. I assure you, I do not make many of them; old age has some small compensations.”
The mixture of exasperation and amusement on the older woman’s face faded away to be replaced by something more thoughtful as she looked out into the night. Benjamin was walking toward the house with a rushlight to show him the way, and the strange shapes thrown by the pierced tin of the lamp shade danced like fairy lights in the darkness. In the endless woods above them, a stag called out, a great rolling sound that echoed down the mountain valley.
“What a strange and wonderful place this is,” Aunt Merriweather said. “Everything is bigger, and taller, and brighter—even the night sky is intemperate. I’m quite sure we do very well with many fewer stars in England.”
“Why, Aunt,” said Elizabeth, surprised out of her watchfulness. “I believe that you like it here.”
There was a flicker on her face, regret perhaps, and sadness. Gone as quickly as it came, forced away by sixty-five years of studied pragmatism.
She said: “Had I been born a son, I should have come with your father to this new land to make a life for myself.” She hesitated, examining the backs of her hands. “At your age I would have disappeared into this wilderness, too. Even now, I can still feel how it lights a fire in the blood.” She turned back to the window. “Is that not so?”
“It is so,” Elizabeth said. “It is exactly so.”
They talked for a very long time, Elizabeth getting up from her place now and then to put more wood on the fire and trim the candlewick. Her aunt had always been a good storyteller, and she had much of interest to relate. Even so, Elizabeth was startled to see the time when Nathaniel finally came to knock on the door.
“The rest of them have all gone off to bed, and Hannah can’t hardly keep her eyes open.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry—what have you been doing with yourself?”
“I had a talk with Will Spencer, and then a longer one with Joshua and Daisy. Looks like another wedding soon.”
“That will please Curiosity,” Elizabeth said with considerable satisfaction of her own.
Nathaniel hesitated. “Do you want to stay here tonight?”
“Of course she does not,” Aunt Merriweather said behind them. “Take her back to your mountain now, Nathaniel. I shall come tomorrow to see what kind of home you two have made together.”
Elizabeth kissed her aunt’s soft cheek, and the old woman held on to her for a moment. “He’s a fine man, my girl. You did better for yourself than my Amanda did, but you know that, do you not?”
She wondered if Nathaniel would raise the subject of her relations straightaway, but he was more concerned about Richard Todd, and unable to curb his curiosity.
“I can’t see your aunt dining at Beaver Hall,” Nathaniel said, shaking his head as he pulled off his leggings.
“She said it was all very elegant. The lieutenant-governor of Montreal was there, and a Huron sachem, and a French comte escaped from the Terror—and Richard in the middle of all of them.”
“I don’t like it,” Nathaniel said. And then, after a longer pause: “There was no sign of Otter?”
“I described him quite carefully. She saw other Indians, but she is fairly sure that she did not meet Otter. And Richard did not mention him. Apparently,” Elizabeth continued slowly. “Apparently Richard was paying court to a young woman.”
“It’s a good thing that Kitty’s squared away, then,” Nathaniel said, but his thoughts were clearly still with Otter. Elizabeth thought of pointing out to him—as her aunt had pointed out to her—that Richard might still marry Kitty, who now had a much more attractive dowry to offer. But Nathaniel had already headed off in another direction.
“If he has any interest in Paradise, or the mountain, he’ll be back here before winter settles in.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “He mentioned to Will that he had business in Albany.”
“Not anymore, he doesn’t,” Nathaniel said firmly.
“But he could not have known that at the time.”
Nathaniel lay back on the bed and reached up to tug on Elizabeth’s hair, which she was plaiting for the night. “He can’t go after you anymore, in court at least.”
She ran a finger over the stubble on his jaw, enjoying the rasp of it. “I had some chance of standing up to him,” she said. “Kitty—well, I am not sure what will happen if he comes proposing marriage all over again.”
“Maybe you could give her lessons in how to turn him down. Since you’ve got some experience at it.”
“I think that perhaps I may have to do just that,�
�� Elizabeth said, leaning over to tousle his hair. “Thank goodness, I’ve got Aunt Merriweather and Amanda to help me, for I fear Kitty will be a reluctant student.”
“So Amanda had more men to choose from, did she?”
She turned away to look for the rawhide string with which she tied her plait. “Not so many as her sister Jane, but yes, I believe she had three or four. But she accepted Will straightaway, once he got to the point.”
Elizabeth gave in, finally, to his silence.
“Nathaniel. We were playmates, and I … enjoyed his company as a young girl. He was one of the few people who would talk to me of books, and did not scold me for my curiosity. He never had any interest in me, and he never knew I had any interest in him. In the end he married as his family hoped and wished, and all parties were most satisfied with the arrangement. If I felt any regret, it was for the friend I lost. And perhaps at first I was disappointed to see him marry to better his connection, rather than for love. But I soon came to see that he and Amanda suit each other.”
“Do they?” Nathaniel asked. “He never even looks at her.”
“I suppose when you and I have been married for six years we might seem the same way, to strangers.”
At that he caught her by the plait, and pulled her down next to him. He kissed her soundly, and held her until she stopped struggling, and then he kissed her again until a small sigh escaped her and she lost track of the conversation, and everything but the taste of him, and the textures of his mouth and the feel of his shoulders under her hands. When Nathaniel raised his head they were both short of breath.
“Do you think you’ll have enough of kissing me, in six years?”
She laughed. “Not in sixty. But must we judge them by our own standards? Amanda is a good wife to Will,” she said with an air of finality.
“And I suppose he is a good husband.”
“You do not like him. That is very sad, because I do.”
Nathaniel lay back, his hands behind his head. The room was chilly, but he did not seem to mind the cold, for he lay there in only his breechclout. Then he turned on his side to talk to her.
“I don’t dislike him. It’s just that he reminds me of someone I knew once,” he said. “It was a long time ago, when I first went to live at Trees-Standing-in-Water.”
“When you were first with Sarah?”
“Aye.” He gave her a grim smile, and then cupped her face in his hand. “I was spending half my time with her brothers and father—this was long before they were killed in the raid. The other half of my time I spent trying to convince Falling-Day and Sarah that I would be a good husband and that I deserved a place in their longhouse. Do you remember, I told you back in the bush that I had been Catholic once?”
“Perhaps that is one detail of your past that we need not share with aunt Merriweather.”
“Do you want to hear this story?”
“I do. But please take your hand away, because it is distracting me.”
She was a little sorry to have him comply so willingly, but then she was also interested in what he had to tell.
Nathaniel said: “There was a priest living there then, a Frenchman who went by the name Father Dupuis. But the Kahnyen’kehàka called him Iron-Dog.”
She had to laugh, in spite of the seriousness of his tone. “What a strange name.”
Nathaniel shrugged. “He had a beard which was ugly to them—they might have just called him Dog-Face, which is what they often call bearded O’seronni. But he also had their respect, because he lived and worked like a man among them.
“I got to know him pretty well, because Sarah wanted me to be baptized. It was one of the conditions she put on letting me come into the longhouse. I can see you’re uneasy with that, but it didn’t mean much to me, Boots. It was just some water and some words, and I didn’t believe any of it. I would have done and said a lot more than that to get where I wanted to be with Sarah.”
“So you did it to please her?”
“Aye, I’m afraid so. But remember, I was barely eighteen, and at that age a man lives between his legs, mostly. Though some hide that better than others, or deny it. The thing about Iron-Dog was that he lived and worked among us as a man, but he had none of a man’s needs.”
“Nathaniel,” Elizabeth began slowly. “As a part of his training he was taught to suppress such urges—I think it was Saint Augustine who said that complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”
“That’s just it,” Nathaniel said. “I spent a long time watching the man, and I came to the conclusion that he never had any appetites to start with. It wasn’t a struggle for him. He never looked twice at the women when they went bare-chested to work the fields, or worried about the way young folks would disappear into the woods—he just didn’t care about those things, and that made him unusual for a priest, and for a man, too. It’s part of the reason he lasted so long among the Kahnyen’kehàka.”
Elizabeth turned onto her stomach and put her chin into the cup of her palm. “Are you trying to tell me that he had … unnatural leanings?”
Nathaniel drew up, surprised. “No, that ain’t what I meant at all. It wasn’t that he liked his own kind—I’ve known a few like that, and that wasn’t it at all, with him. There was no hunger in him at all for human touch, of any kind at all.”
Elizabeth was disconcerted by the comparison of such a man to Will Spencer; she sought in her mind for examples of her knowledge of him that would disprove what Nathaniel was proposing.
“You saw him greet me,” she said. “Surely you could find nothing cold in him there.”
“I never used the word cold.”
“You might have,” she said. “You are accusing him of a lack of interest in things worldly and mortal, as if he were some kind of … would-be saint. You are perfectly at your leisure to dislike Will, if you must, but perhaps it has less to do with him than it does with you.”
Nathaniel’s face went very still for a moment, but there was a great deal of movement behind his eyes as he thought. She could see him weighing words and rejecting them.
“I never said I didn’t like him, Boots. I don’t know him well enough to come down on either side of that, yet. But you’ve put your finger on something. Maybe there is something of the saint in your Will Spencer, the way there was in Iron-Dog. And maybe it’s me that’s at fault, then, because I might respect a saint, but it’s damn hard to like one.”
“He is not my Will Spencer,” Elizabeth said, her irritation getting the upper hand. “He is an old friend and my cousin’s husband. I can see nothing saintlike about him at all.”
“Well, you don’t share a bed with him.” Nathaniel grinned; his mood was shifting as clearly as the moon moved down the night sky. “Maybe that’s what your aunt meant when she said you did better for yourself than Amanda.”
She rolled onto her back to glare at him. “Your ears are altogether too sharp. That comment was not meant for you to hear.”
“Really?” he said, one brow raised. “I ain’t so sure about that.” He seemed on the verge of saying more, and then he stopped, and ran a finger down her neck and into the opening of her nightdress.
“I’ll spend some time with Will this week, see if I’m wrong.”
“Good,” Elizabeth said, somewhat mollified. And then, after a long pause while his finger traced her collarbone: “It’s late, perhaps we should sleep.”
“Aye, I can see you’re tired.” His hand continued on its quest over her shoulder. “Tell me to stop, then.”
She made a small sound in the back of her throat, and closed her eyes. “It is very late,” she said hoarsely.
“Tell me to stop.” His breath was very warm against her ear.
“I don’t want to,” she said, turning to him. “You think you’re the only one with strong appetites, Nathaniel Bonner. Well, I am here to prove you wrong.”
He laughed then, his hands moving on her, stripping her nightdress away. Even in the gentle touch of candl
elight his expression was severe with desire. And it struck her suddenly that Amanda did not know of this, might have never known what it was to see this look in her husband’s face, to feel wanted in this way. Elizabeth tried to imagine that, the lack of wanting in Nathaniel’s eyes, and she was overwhelmed with thankfulness for him, for his hands beneath her and his strong kisses, the touch of his tongue. When he was over her she spread her hands on his back and arched up to meet him to tell him so, but he took the words from her, stole them from her with his look, that look that came over him when he was inside her: intent on more, always more, intent on disappearing into her, on becoming part of her, sweat and blood and seed.
“You see?” he said, stealing her words and then feeding them back to her, stroke by stroke: “You see?”
LIX
Elizabeth’s week was consumed by aunt Merriweather. On those few days that she was not expected at her father’s, her aunt came to spend the day on the mountain. She sometimes brought Amanda and Will with her but more often came alone, accompanied only by Galileo, or Benjamin. She drew everyone who came across her path into conversation, curious about each small detail of life at Lake in the Clouds. Examining the pelts on their stretchers, Aunt Merriweather expressed a strong inclination to see an animal which could produce a fur of such value and utility. Between Runs-from-Bears and Hannah, she marched off to the nearest beaver pond at dusk and waited patiently, getting her boots wet but coming back to the cabin highly satisfied with her success.
She had soon won most of them over: Falling-Day’s reservations seemed to give way quite quickly, and while Liam was openly jealous of the way Elizabeth’s aunt could claim Hannah’s attention, he himself went out of the way to present a good picture to the old lady, even asking for a comb on one occasion when she was expected. Only Many-Doves remained distant, and watchful, unmoved by the gifts that had been brought for her from Montreal, polite at all times but unwilling to be drawn in. It was Many-Doves who gave aunt Merriweather her Kahnyen’kehàka name: She-Pulls-the-Winds-Behind-Her. Elizabeth smiled uneasily when she heard it, but she could not deny that it was appropriate.