The Endless Forest

by Sara Donati

  Bookman cocked a brow. “You doubt his memory too?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  He inclined his head. “I should have time to read this before the hearing. If that’s all?”

  “There is one more thing we need to talk to you about,” Nathaniel said. “Boots, don’t look so surprised. I see the roadblocks just as clear as you do.”

  “What roadblocks are you talking about?” Bookman said. He was rifling through the papers with considerable interest.

  “Jemima has a long history in Paradise,” Nathaniel said. “You’ve heard the stories. What we’re worried about is people who’ll show up because they’ve got some score to settle and want to be heard.”

  “You object to that?”

  “At the hearing this afternoon, yes. As far as I’m concerned you can have a hearing every day, one for every man jack in Paradise who has a bone to pick with Jemima. But today we’d appreciate it if you could keep things focused on Levi’s complaint.”

  “I can’t turn people away from a public hearing,” Bookman said. “In fact I was just on my way to ask John Mayfair if he’d come to serve as her counsel.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” Nathaniel said. “Nobody will accuse John of favoritism. Beyond that, we’re not asking you to close the hearing.”

  “Then what did you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure,” Nathaniel said. “But my wife has an idea. Don’t you, Boots?”

  She gave him a sour look. Later he’d get an earful about his methods, but the truth was they depended on each other in situations like this.

  Elizabeth said, “Of course the hearing must be open,” she said. “Have you made it public yet? Provided any details?”

  “I have. Four o’clock at Lake in the Clouds, is what I gave people to understand.”

  “Very good,” Elizabeth said. “Then here is my suggestion: May the principal parties plan to see you there at three?”

  Bookman’s expression was half surprise and half admiration.

  “I think that could be arranged,” he said.

  “Then we’ll leave you to your reading,” Nathaniel said, taking Elizabeth by the arm. “And be on our way.”

  When Martha and Daniel started home just before noon storm clouds were beginning to muscle their way into the Sacandaga valley. Below the lowering thunderheads the light took on the odd cast of copper touched with green, the kind of light some people called gloaming. It made every tree stand out from its neighbor, and every leaf on those trees began to twist and flutter in the wind, as fitful as anxious children. It seemed as though the clouds were leaching the heat from the sky, so that flesh slick with sweat just minutes before suddenly rose in gooseflesh.

  The only thing Martha had wanted just a half hour earlier was her own bed and sleep; now she was fully awake and aware. The horses tossed their heads anxiously and nickered to each other.

  Daniel picked up the pace as the first fat raindrops began to fall, and then again when the wind shifted and brought a scattering of hail that stung face and hands. Just when Martha began to worry that the horses might really bolt, they came into the center of the village. Daniel rode straight for the livery behind the blacksmithy, hardly slowing as he passed through the double doors.

  He was on the ground in a single leap, reaching out to grab Abel’s harness with calming words. Martha took that opportunity to dismount and then nearly staggered, her knees were shaking so.

  The hail drumming on the tin roof made so much noise that they would have to raise their voices to be heard, so instead they went to stand side by side in the open doors and watch. Hail the size of a child’s fist bounced off the ground, pummeled wash hung out to dry, and knocked flat the few chickens that had not been quick enough to find shelter. It stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the first wave of rain came in on a buffeting wind.

  Martha took a few steps back, shivering so that her teeth clacked. The sound seemed to rouse Daniel out of a trance. He looked around himself.

  “There,” Martha said. “Blankets.”

  “I think we can do better than horse blankets. Hold on a minute.”

  When he had taken care of the horses, Daniel put his hand on the small of her back and steered her out of the stable and into the smithy itself, empty now as Joshua Hench closed for business during the dinner hour. In the hearth that fed the forge a low fire still burned. Martha put her back against the warm chimney and the warmth of it made her sigh.

  She watched Daniel tending the fire. He concentrated so completely on what he was doing, she knew that she would have to call his name twice to get his attention. There was a great deal of comfort in this moment, watching him tend to the simplest, most basic chores. He had his father’s quiet competence that never drew attention to itself.

  The fire roared into life and lit his face with its strong jaw and deep-set eyes. He might have felt the weight of her regard, because he raised his head and grinned at her.

  “Warm?”

  She nodded. “Getting there.”

  The rain was coming down so hard that the glass in the two window-panes rattled, and yet the first flash of lightning took Martha by surprise, so that she jumped in place. Daniel brushed his hands off and came to stand with her.

  They leaned against the rough brick, shoulder to shoulder as the storm shook the world around them. It was then that Martha realized that the anxiety she had been fighting all day had gone. Somehow in the dash for shelter and warmth she had lost the tightness in her chest and throat. For the moment, at least, she could think about the hearing without breaking into a sweat.

  “It would be nice,” she said aloud.

  “To stay here like this?” Daniel inclined his head. “Until we got hungry.” And, after a moment: “We could sleep for a few minutes, if you like. Until the worst of the storm passes.”

  It sounded like a wonderful idea, a half hour’s sleep in the soft warmth smelling of sweet hay and charcoal. And then it seemed that sleep was not possible, because a question forced its way into the clean stall where they made a nest for themselves.

  “What if Jemima has done something even worse than we imagine?”

  He heard her. She felt the question being taken in and then turned over in his mind but he wouldn’t answer until he had thought it through, which was another thing to appreciate about him, though it did make her pulse pick up a beat.

  “I don’t care what she’s done,” he said finally. “It can’t change the way I feel about you.”

  It wasn’t the question she had asked, but it was a good answer anyway.

  Daniel turned a little so he could see her face in the half light. “I don’t think you understand it yet, Martha, so let me say it once more, as clear as I can. You bore the burden of your mother as a girl, and you bore it alone. But you’re a woman, and you’re not alone. Just the same way we’ll stand together at the hearing this afternoon and face whatever comes. You and me and my whole family at our backs. No matter what she has to say, no matter how bad, none of that matters. I know you’re afraid and you’ve got reason to be afraid, but sometime or another you’re going to have to trust me.”

  “But I do. I do trust you.”

  “No you don’t,” he said. “Not down deep. Not where you’ve got all that history with your mother bundled up and tied with a knot. You can’t let it go for fear of the damage it’ll do, so you keep it to yourself.”

  “How do you know?” Martha said. “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you,” he said. “Because I know you in your bones. Because I know without a doubt that you are not your mother and you could never be her.”

  “I wish I were as confident of that as you are.”

  Daniel said, “So do I.”

  The storm passed and the sun came out to set the world on fire. Every raindrop on every leaf sparkled, and the air smelled new-washed, as it must have smelled on the day the earth was created.

  Elizabeth had walked this way so often she wo
uld never have believed that it could take her by surprise, but it seemed that she was wrong.

  The very first time she came to Lake in the Clouds, on a snowy winter day, it was Hannah who had showed her the way. How young they had both been. How unaware of the things ahead. The natural beauty of the place had overwhelmed her, and beyond that she was aware of her life shifting and changing with every step in ways she had never expected to find, certainly not here on the frontier with a man she had only known for weeks. A backwoodsman.

  The jutting shoulder of the mountain curved abruptly inward like a mother protecting a child. The result was the glen the Mohawk called Lake in the Clouds. It measured almost a mile from the precipice to the falls at its innermost corner. Many things had changed here over the years, but the falls were constant.

  “Boots,” Nathaniel said. “You look like you’re dream-walking.”

  “It feels that way too,” she said. “I’m glad we came on foot.”

  They caught sight of Gabriel. He was draped over a rock on the edge of the cornfield, bare-chested to the sun, and anyone else might have thought he was sleeping. Elizabeth knew he was not.

  He sat up when they were within talking distance and raised a hand in greeting. Then he picked up his rifle, got to his feet, and trotted over. His expression was purposefully blank, and that seemed almost proper given what was about to happen.

  Nathaniel said, “I look at him and I see my father.”

  Gabriel had been almost grown when Hawkeye came home to Paradise. The resemblance had always been obvious, but when they finally stood side by side it seemed as if the past had come forward to merge with the present. Elizabeth was glad of it for Nathaniel’s sake, and for Gabriel’s. He would never have a moment’s doubt about where he belonged.

  He leaned down to kiss his mother. “Everybody else is inside, waiting for you.”

  “Who all would that be?”

  “Bookman, Daniel and Martha, Ethan and Callie, Hannah and Levi. John Mayfair; he came up with Bookman. And Susanna. She’s there to see to Jemima if need be.”

  “I’m sorry this burden fell on you,” Elizabeth told him, and he looked directly surprised.

  “Not on me,” he said. “Susanna took one look and made Jemima her concern. You know how she is when she lets her Quaker side get hold of a problem.”

  “What problem does she mean to solve?” Nathaniel asked.

  “A peaceful death, is what she said to me. How she plans to get Jemima there, that I don’t know beyond the fact that the two of them sat out in the sun near the falls for most of the morning. Now Jemima has stopped talking to anybody but Susanna.”

  Nathaniel said, “As much as I like and admire Susanna, I don’t think anybody could reach Jemima anymore. If anything has tamed her, it’s the cancer.”

  “Maybe,” Gabriel said. “I suppose you’re about to find out.”

  —

  Hawkeye built the original cabin nearest the falls when he brought Cora there as a bride. That cabin was gone, burned to the ground in the year ’06. In its place Nathaniel had built a proper house, far more comfortable and conveniently laid out, but Elizabeth couldn’t approach this spot without missing the simpler cabin where she had borne all but her youngest.

  “My mind keeps wandering away to the past,” she told Nathaniel. “Looking for an escape route of some kind, I suppose.”

  “We’ll get through this, Boots, and so will Martha and Callie and the boy.”

  Elizabeth was trying to decide if that was true when they came into the main room. Someone had rearranged the furniture to suit the purpose at hand—benches in a half circle around the chair where Jemima sat, a table for Bookman and one for Ethan, who would record the proceedings. Someone else might have taken on that task today, but Elizabeth kept that thought to herself. There was no one she’d trust more.

  Jemima sat apart, bundled like an infant. Her color was off and there were unfamiliar hollows in her cheeks, but the surprise was her expression. Dampened, was the word that came to mind.

  The most striking thing about Jemima when she was in health was the intensity of her gaze, always alert for injustice against herself. Now Jemima sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap, her mouth slightly open. She blinked slowly, and Elizabeth realized that Hannah had given her something—had given her quite a lot of something—for the pain.

  Magistrate Bookman was at his table looking over the papers he had received from Elizabeth a few hours before. The others sat as though they had been sworn to silence, unwilling to talk in front of Jemima for reasons that might be called superstitious. Callie sat alone on a bench with Levi standing behind her, rocking back and forth on his feet, his chin cradled on his chest.

  Jim Bookman looked up from the papers and cleared his throat.

  “We’re here at the request of Levi Fiddler to hear evidence against Mrs. Jemima—Focht, is it?”

  “For the moment,” Jemima said.

  “John Mayfair is here as your counsel.”

  “If he likes,” Jemima said. She sent a glance to Susanna, who sat in a corner, straight of back, her head canted to one side as she listened.

  “I call this hearing to order. In the matter of the death of Cookie Fiddler, a manumitted slave, on or about the eighteenth day of November in the year 1812. At the time there was no clear decision on the nature of Mrs. Fiddler’s death—Mr. Middleton, will you read the findings?”

  Ethan had been waiting. He began without hesitation.

  Statement Submitted into Evidence

  Signed by Hannah Bonner, Physician

  Witnessed by Mrs. Elizabeth Bonner

  and Ethan Middleton, Esq.

  On the 26th day of December I examined the remains of Mrs. Cookie Fiddler in the presence of Mrs. Bonner and Mrs. Freeman of this village, as Dr. Todd is recently deceased and there is no other with the training to perform this last service.

  The subject was a mulatto Negro woman of about sixty years, very small and slight of stature but well nourished and without obvious external signs of illness. Both ears pierced. The body bore numerous scars, primarily of whippings to the back and legs. The right fibula was once broken and set crookedly.

  First observations indicated that the subject died by drowning when the water was at or very near freezing, for her remains were well preserved. On autopsy it was determined that her lungs were in fact filled with water, which indicates that she was alive when she fell into the lake. All other internal organs appeared unremarkable for a healthy woman of her years.

  The only wound on her person was on the back of her head, an indentation about a half inch deep, three fingers wide, and a half foot long, regular in shape, as might have been made by a blow with a wood stave or by falling and striking the head on a wood structure such as the handrail or edge of a bridge. The blow was severe enough to slice the scalp to the skull, cleave the skull itself, and render the subject insensible. There were no other signs of struggle, that is, no broken fingernails or wounds as might have been received in a struggle for her life. In addition, there were a few grains of sand clutched in her hand and found in the folds of her clothing.

  Thus is it my opinion that Cookie Fiddler’s death may have been an accident or a murder, but it is not in my power to declare which on the basis of the evidence I had before me. I surmise that she received a blow to the head and fell unconscious into the lake, where she drowned.

  This statement dictated to and taken down by Ethan Middle-ton and signed by my own hand and sworn to be true to the best of my knowledge and ability:

  Hannah Bonner, also known as Walks-Ahead by the

  Kahnyen’kehàka of the Wolf Longhouse at Good Pasture

  and by Walking-Woman by her husband’s people, the Seneca,

  this first day of January 1813.

  “This is an unusual situation,” said Bookman. “Maybe the oddest I’ve ever come across since I’ve been a magistrate, up in Plattsville or here. Mr. Fiddler, is there some new evidence come to light
these eleven years later that makes you believe a trial is warranted?”

  “Should have been one back then,” Levi said.

  “Be that as it may,” said Bookman. “Is there new evidence you wish to present?”

  “Just what never got said last time.”

  “Well, then,” said Bookman. “The accused is very ill, as I understand it. Is that so, Mrs. Savard?”

  Hannah agreed that it was.

  “A mortal illness.”

  “She has very little time.”

  “Mr. Mayfair, do you consider Mrs. Focht to be well enough to take part in these proceedings?”

  “She is in her right mind. As far as her physical well-being is concerned, that question is best answered by Friend Hannah.”

  Hannah stood again. “She has had a large dose of laudanum which will keep the pain within bounds for a while. There are side effects, but she is able to speak on her own behalf.”

  “Of course I am,” Jemima said. “With laudanum all things are possible.”

  The peculiar smile on her face was far more unsettling than any diatribe she might have delivered.

  “Mr. Fiddler,” said Jim Bookman. “Your statement.”

  It seemed for a moment that Levi wouldn’t speak at all. Then he raised his head and straightened to his full height.

  “My mother and my brothers and me were born in slavery, into the Kuick family that used to live here in Paradise. The same family Mrs. Focht married into.”

  He must have rehearsed this speech hundreds of times over the years, because it flowed easily, from one point to the next without hesitation or reaching. Levi told about the Kuick household and his mother’s responsibilities in the kitchen, about Jemima’s first arrival at the house as a maid, and the changes once she married Isaiah Kuick. In quick strokes he drew a picture of Jemima as a woman who disliked his mother on sight and did what was in her power to make Cookie’s life miserable.

  “Because Ma wasn’t afraid of her,” Levi said. “That’s what made her so mad. We were still slaves or we would have left right then. Once we got our manumission papers and we went to work for Mr. Wilde at the orchard things got better. All three of us, Mama and my brother Zeke and me. Mama in the house, me and Zeke in the orchards. That was the best time, until the day Mrs. Wilde and my mama both went missing and never were seen alive again.”