by Sara Donati
Nathaniel swore to himself. The idiot would have the guards here.
A window opened above their heads. “She’s not outside, you bloody great booby, Quinn. Come in from the cold.” The window shut again.
“Have to piss first,” Quinn called back. “Then I shall find her. You shan’t have ’er, do you mind me, Johnson?” Muttering, he turned, and shuffled off a few steps, pulling at his breeks as he went.
The five of them started in the opposite direction, crouched low and moving fast. Once around the corner, they bent their heads together.
Hawkeye said, “We’ll have to split up and meet at the start of the ice road.”
“If I may—” began Moncrieff, and Hawkeye cut him off with a hand on the shoulder.
“If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to do it on the run. If you’re up to that.”
“Giselle!” shouted Quinn, closer now. “Giselle!” Overhead the cloud cover was breaking up so that Nathaniel could see his father’s face.
“Giselle!”
The sound of boots in the snow, from the opposite direction. The guards came trotting, finally roused from the warm house and their card game. The hidden staircase was risky, but anything was better than standing exposed in the garden. Otter sprinted for the bushes, with the other men close behind.
Once inside they waited, completely still, for the voices in the garden to fade away, but instead they grew louder. Nathaniel felt the blood thrumming in his hands, his leg muscles twitching with the need to be away. Otter’s chest was heaving as if he had run a hot mile, and Moncrieff stood tensed and ready to bolt. More than he bargained for, Nathaniel thought. Robbie and Hawkeye kept their calm: old soldiers, they had lived through far worse.
Treenie shifted uneasily in the total dark.
“Wheest,” Robbie breathed, and she settled down.
Nathaniel focused on the regular ebb and flow of his father’s breathing, ordered his thoughts, and lined up their few options. There was no help for it, so he took the stairs three at a time to listen at Giselle’s door. Nothing.
From the courtyard came the sound of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones.
At Nathaniel’s signal they came up the stairs and into the bedchamber. The smells hung in the air like smoke from a wet-wood fire: beeswax, lavender, crushed roses, musk. Otter stood paralyzed at the door and had to be pushed forward. Nathaniel knew what he was feeling. I didn’t have any intention of ever setting foot in this room again, either.
More bad news at the window: the courtyard was full of redcoats, horses, servants, a sea of bobbing lanterns and torches. Guards milled below the window, poking in the bushes. Nathaniel caught a glimpse of Pickering and a few of the others, walking away as if they had nothing to do with any of it.
“They’re looking for you,” he said, turning. Some part of his mind registered the strange sight they made, rough backwoodsmen in the gilt and velvet and silk of Giselle’s chamber. Moncrieff had collapsed into a spindle-backed chair; Robbie peered over the top of the canopied bed. The red dog rested her mucky rear quarters on an embroidered footstool, sniffed at the perfumed draperies and sneezed.
Hawkeye came to look through lace panels for himself. “I’d call this a tangle, all right.”
Robbie was prowling, opening wardrobes and closing them again in disgust. “Nae place tae hide.”
Otter still stood in the middle of the room, frowning into the banked fire in the hearth. Then he turned and walked to a full-length mirror on the wall opposite the bed, and punched at the belly of a gilded angel on the upper right corner. The mirror levered away from the wall with a sigh.
“That’s a new one on me,” Nathaniel said.
Hawkeye rubbed a hand over his mouth, peering into the cubbyhole. “She’s fond of hiding games, ain’t she? Does Pink George know about it?”
Otter made a negative sound in his throat.
“There’s room enough for one,” said Moncrieff.
“We still got a chance to get out of here,” said Hawkeye. “Although I’ll admit it don’t look good.” He studied Otter for a long moment. “I have the feeling she’ll let you get away, if she can keep her father out of it. Ain’t that so?”
Otter nodded. “Hen’en.” Yes.
Hawkeye cast a glance out the window. In Kahnyen’ kehàka he said, “Listen to me. If it comes to that, you slip away as soon as it’s safe, and hightail it for Hidden Wolf.” He lowered his voice. “Send Runs-from-Bears back here with gold.”
Otter blinked his understanding.
In a rush, Hawkeye’s voice lowered to a harsh whisper. “Tell Bears to stay clear of this Scotsman. He don’t need to know all our business. You understand why I’m talking to you this way?”
The boy’s face stilled, and he nodded. Behind him, Robbie’s expression was just as thoughtful. Moncrieff started to speak, and thought better of it.
At the door to the hidden stairs there was a light scratching and they all turned together.
“Giselle?” came a hoarse whisper. “I hear you in there. Let me in, sweetings. It’s Jonathan.” Quinn had found the hidden door at last, and lost his bluster in the process.
“Giselle,” he pleaded.
As if she had heard him call, Giselle’s voice rose up from the front hall. Her playful tone was gone. She was agitated, out of breath, and coming this way.
Nathaniel flung the door to the hidden staircase open and grabbed an astounded Quinn by the epaulets to drag him into the room.
“Wha—” was all he could get out before Rab tapped him neatly over the ear with his rifle butt. Otter caught him up as he collapsed onto Giselle’s Turkish carpet and tossed him onto the bed.
“There,” he said. “That’s what he wanted anyway.”
Giselle was very close, shouting orders down the stairs. Outside, there were new voices in the garden.
Otter caught Nathaniel’s eye. Wordlessly, Nathaniel held out his rifle and his powder horn, and Otter took them and climbed into the cubbyhole behind the mirror.
Hawkeye reached in and pressed Otter’s shoulder. “We’re putting our trust in you, son. Don’t leave us sitting in that gaol any longer than you can manage.”
They were away, closing the door behind them and down stone steps, Treenie bringing up the rear. As they reached the bottom, candlelight flooded the stairwell from above just as the door below began to swing inward.
“Damnation,” whispered Moncrieff.
“Oh, we ain’t that far, yet,” said Hawkeye. “We’ll live to fight another day.”
Colonel George Somerville, Viscount Bainbridge, lieutenant governor of Lower Canada, stood in the doorway before them in a circle of lantern light. Pink George, as he was known to his men and most of Montréal. He was in a muddy traveling cloak, his thin face blotched with the cold, his eyes sparkling some deep satisfaction. At his back was a whole unit of redcoats, bayonets at the ready.
A soft sound of surprise from Giselle, above them. Caught out at last, Nathaniel thought. And us with her. If it weren’t for Elizabeth waiting for him, he might have found some humor in that.
“Gentlemen.” The lieutenant governor peered at them over the top of his spectacles, his chin bedded on his chest.
Treenie growled, her hackles rising.
Somerville raised a brow. “Sergeant Jones,” he said, one corner of his mouth jerking downward. “Take the dog outside and shoot it. As for the rest of you, I hope you enjoyed my daughter’s little dinner party. There won’t be another.”
6
“Well, now,” said Curiosity, bending over Daniel to peer into his face. “I’d say this boy’s eyes’ll settle down to green any day.” The baby waved his fist at her nose, and she laughed.
“Not hazel?” Elizabeth asked, regarding Many-Doves’ son in the nest on her lap. Almost four months old and a solid brick of a child, Blue-Jay smiled up at her. He had his parents’ black eyes, the same deep color as the halo of hair that stood out all over his head.
“No, ma
’am,” said Curiosity, flipping Daniel neatly as she wrapped him in flannel. “Green, like new leaves on the sugar maple. And just as sweet, ain’t that so, baby?”
From the other room came his sister’s wail, as if this news did not suit her in the least. Elizabeth started up from the rocking chair, but Curiosity stopped her with a look, and dropped Daniel in her lap.
“You stay put,” she said. “You got a cabin full of women here to help out, after all. I expect between us we’ll see to Miss Lily.”
“You needn’t coddle me, you know,” Elizabeth called. But Curiosity simply flapped her hand behind her as she left the bedroom.
Daniel blinked up at her and cooed, all earnest concentration. Elizabeth answered in kind, and he waved his arms enthusiastically, settling in for a good long talk. Of course Curiosity was right: his eyes would be green, just as Mathilde’s would be blue. “Blue as the flaglily in May,” Curiosity had declared, and thus she had become Lily to one and all. Elizabeth’s own solemn gray and Nathaniel’s hazel had somehow gotten lost between the two children, but their father was stamped on each of them nonetheless, from the curve of their ear-lobes to the shape of their toenails. Of herself Elizabeth saw very little in the babies, with the exception of the curls that framed their faces.
Elizabeth yelped as Blue-Jay tugged hard at her plait. Daniel was examining his own hands, as if to ask them how such a task might be undertaken. In the other room Lily had settled down, probably strapped into a cradleboard on Falling-Day’s back, where all of the babies seemed most content. Elizabeth studied the faces before her and blew softly to ruffle their hair, earning crows of delight from both of them.
Nathaniel had not yet seen the twins smile. He had not seen them since they were three days old.
It was against the rule she had set for herself, but Elizabeth could not help counting the days since he had started north. Soon it would be eight weeks—far too long, much longer than he had anticipated. There was no way to know if he was on the road home, or had ever arrived in Montréal, but her faith in his ability to do what must be done was firm, just as he trusted her to see to their children’s welfare. And still, with every passing day she grew more unsettled, and recently she had begun to dream.
The babies slept now for longer periods in the night, and Elizabeth slept, too. She dreamt of snow. The Windigo of the endless forests visited her dreams, their pelts crackling white, stone men with eyes like wet raspberries. In her dreams there was always a winding ice road that gleamed silver and black, but no trace of Nathaniel. And that terrified her most of all.
Blue-Jay began to squirm, and she shook herself out of the daydream. He was working his face into the thoughtful expression that meant he wanted feeding. Elizabeth would have put him to her own breast—just as Many-Doves sometimes nursed Lily or Daniel so that Elizabeth could sleep for another hour—but the first real squawk brought his mother to the door.
He squeaked and chirped with impatience while she put aside the mending she had in her hands and settled on the edge of the bed with him.
“You are well named, my son.” Many-Doves spoke Kahnyen’kehàka, as she always did when English could be avoided. She gathered the boy closer to her and loosened her overblouse.
The two women sat in companionable silence for some time, listening to Blue-Jay’s contented gulping. There was the sound of new snow scouring the roof, and outside the thud of an axe. It reminded Elizabeth that there were still men on Hidden Wolf, although Falling-Day had banished Liam and Runs-from-Bears to the other cabin so that the women had complete reign in this one.
Daniel was looking decidedly sleepy, and Elizabeth shifted him to a more comfortable position, stifling a yawn of her own.
Doves stroked her son’s cheek thoughtfully. “Runs-from-Bears wants to start north,” she said, seeking out Elizabeth’s eye.
“Ah,” Elizabeth said, relief and fear fluttering together under her blouse. “What does Falling-Day think?”
“My mother dreams of the ice road, but there is no sign of our men on it.”
In another time, in the life she once lived, Elizabeth would have been unnerved by this news that she and Falling-Day were having such similar dreams. But in the past year she had learned that reason and logic had boundaries.
Many-Doves was watching her closely.
“When does Bears want to leave?”
“Soon,” Doves said. “Perhaps tomorrow.”
Just after dawn Elizabeth woke to the sound of a step on the porch and Falling-Day rising hastily from her sleeping platform under Hannah’s loft. Elizabeth’s heart gave a tremendous leap, and she ran, barefoot, her nightdress streaming behind her, into the other room.
In the open door stood Otter, healthy and whole, although his face was drawn and thin. Alone. Elizabeth pushed past him into the gray early morning, unable and unwilling to believe what her eyes told her. There was nothing but the March winter waiting for her, the snow burning cold under her bare feet.
Nathaniel’s rifle was slung across Otter’s back. She reached out to take the sling from his shoulder and he let it go without a word.
She would know it anywhere, even without the name carved in the stock. Deerkiller. How many times had she seen it in his hands? She herself had fired it once, and that simple act had sent her alone into the wilderness on a desperate race. Nathaniel would no more leave this rifle behind than he would give up his sight or hearing.
Otter was talking to her, but she could make no sense of it. Her blood was thundering in her ears. Elizabeth shook her head, forcing herself to focus. She needed to hear him; she wanted to run away.
He took her by the arm and drew her into the cabin. “I bring you word from your husband, my brother,” he said. “Listen to me. He is alive, he is well.”
“Grandfather?” asked Hannah, pulling on Otter’s arm. “What of my grandfather?”
“He is well, too, and sends his greetings.”
From the cradle in the other room came the howling of the twins, and with that Elizabeth found her voice. “Why are they not here with you? Why do you have Nathaniel’s rifle?” But even without the expression on his face, she could see for herself what must have happened. “He went to get you out of gaol, you and Hawkeye. It went wrong, didn’t it?”
Otter nodded.
“How long?”
“Somerville arrested them on the first night of the full moon.”
Three weeks. Elizabeth swallowed hard. Nathaniel had been sitting in the garrison gaol for three weeks; Hawkeye for much longer. They are alive, she reminded herself, rubbing her cheek on the cold metal of the rifle barrel. Nathaniel is alive.
Otter began to speak, but his mother interrupted him.
“First you will eat,” said Falling-Day. “And then you will talk.”
While Elizabeth and Many-Doves went about the business of seeing to the children’s needs, Otter submitted to his mother’s care. Falling-Day put a bowl of red corn soup in his hands and watched him eat until it was empty. Then she stood Otter before the hearth and stripped him down to the breechclout as if he were a boy of six rather than a well-grown man of seventeen. Her examination was thorough, less than gentle, and accompanied by detailed commentary on his behavior. Otter bore it all without protest, perhaps because he was in pain, or perhaps simply because he was glad to be home, at any price.
“Perhaps Giselle Somerville taught him more about women than he was ready to learn,” Elizabeth whispered to Lily as she nursed. The baby wrinkled her forehead in agreement, her small hand patting Elizabeth’s breast as if to comfort her.
Three of Otter’s fingers were badly frostbitten, and Hannah was set to rubbing them with a piece of flannel until they came howling back to life. But it was his feet that gave Falling-Day real pause. Liam was sent to fetch Curiosity, and after a long consultation, Runs-from-Bears sharpened a boning knife and they took off two small toes that were festering badly, and beyond their combined skills. Through all of this Otter made no sound at all, a
lthough there were beads of perspiration on his upper lip, and his hand shook when he pulled at Hannah’s plaits in an attempt to get her to smile.
Elizabeth knew without being told how fortunate Otter was. A late blizzard had kept him trapped in a snow cave for three full days; he was lucky to have survived at all. That he needed food, and medical care, and sleep after hard days on the trail—these things she understood completely, and still she struggled with the urge to shake the story out of him.
Finally, Curiosity withdrew to the other room with all three babies, firm in her belief that the discussion that was about to take place should not include her. Liam too was ready to slip away, when Elizabeth took his arm and directed him to the group around the hearth. He hunkered down, his hands dangling over knees that threatened to poke through homespun breeches, his gaze on the floor. He would not understand very much of what was said, but still she wanted him there.
Elizabeth had heard Otter tell stories many times; he had a strong voice and a way with his audience. But this tale he began in fits and starts, speaking directly to his mother, focusing on her face alone. He spoke of following Richard Todd to Montréal in the late summer, of Hawkeye’s arrival at the O’seronni New Year, their preparation to leave Montréal, and the first arrest by Somerville. He told it all without ever mentioning Giselle Somerville. But when all was said and done, none of the details mattered. The trouble at hand was more than enough: Hawkeye, Nathaniel, and Robbie sat in the garrison gaol in Montréal, and with them Angus Moncrieff.
By the time Otter finished, Elizabeth had broken out in a fine sweat.
“Somebody sent for Somerville,” Bears said, finally. “Some traitor.”
Otter raised one shoulder. “It looks that way.”
Elizabeth pressed her hands together in her lap. “They were charged with helping you escape?”