by Sara Donati
Otter’s gaze flickered away from her, as jumpy as the fire in the hearth. “And with spying.”
“Spying!” Hannah jumped up. Many-Doves pulled her back down. Liam shifted uneasily, his gaze roving from face to face.
“In peacetime?” Elizabeth asked, her voice crackling dry and unfamiliar in her throat.
Runs-from-Bears said, “The English are at war with France.”
“Then we are fortunate not to be French,” proposed Many-Doves, frowning at her husband as if he personally were responsible for the wars Europeans waged upon one another.
Otter said, “It is because the Americans stay out of the war with France that the English are suspicious.”
“We are not Americans, either,” Hannah said defiantly.
Falling-Day said, “The O’seronni look at Wolf-Running-Fast and Hawkeye and they see what they want to see. They do not know how to look deeper than the color of their skin.”
“Rab fought under Schuyler in the last war, and so did Nathaniel,” Runs-from-Bears pointed out.
“Nathaniel fought with our Kahnyen’kehàka warriors,” Falling-Day corrected him.
Elizabeth said, “In any case, the idea of Nathaniel as a spy for France is absurd, and I’m sure they are aware of that. It is only an excuse to hold them there.”
Hannah’s face crumpled. “They hang spies.”
“No,” Otter said quickly. “At least, not straight off. Iona says that Carleton himself is supposed to question them, but he won’t be in Montréal before May. So there’s enough time for Bears to get up there with the gold.” He cast an uneasy glance in Liam’s direction, but the boy was watching Hannah, and clearly had not understood.
Elizabeth held out an arm and Hannah came to her, her face a misery. “Squirrel,” Elizabeth said, using her Kahnyen’kehàka name. “Do you hear? There is time.” Pray God, she added to herself, her mind racing madly over the few facts she had, and a hundred questions that could not be answered.
Falling-Day turned to Bears. “You will start north tomorrow. Surely the gold will help.”
“The gold will do no earthly good at all,” said Elizabeth softly, smoothing Hannah’s hair. “Bears has no way to know whom to approach. Is that not true?”
Reluctantly, Runs-from-Bears nodded.
Hannah pulled on Elizabeth’s sleeve. “There must be a way.”
“There is a way,” said Elizabeth firmly. “But there is no time to waste. There is somebody in Albany who can help.”
Bears raised a brow. “Phillip Schuyler won’t be any use in Montréal. He and Somerville are old enemies.”
“Perhaps General Schuyler could not sway Somerville,” Elizabeth conceded. “But I doubt even Somerville would ignore the son and heir of the chief justice of the King’s Bench.”
At this switch to English, Liam sat up with a quizzical look. “By God,” he said. “Who would that be?”
“Cousin Amanda’s husband, Will Spencer, Viscount Durbeyfield,” said Hannah. “You remember, Liam. They came to visit with Elizabeth’s aunt in the summer. They haven’t gone back to England yet.”
“Spencer is in Albany?” Otter asked.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “I had a letter from them recently.”
“Well, then,” said Liam with a great sigh of relief. “Send Will Spencer to Montréal. He’s a lawyer, ain’t he? He’ll get them out of gaol.”
Falling-Day was watching Elizabeth closely, her head cocked to one side. “Bone-in-Her-Back,” she said quietly, using Elizabeth’s Kahnyen’kehàka name. “Would you send a man to do work that needs a woman’s understanding?”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. This was the question: would she have her cousin go to Montréal to try to achieve a political end to this situation, or would she take it in her own hands? The part of her that was still an English lady of good family could barely conceive of the idea that she might travel so far in the middle of winter on men’s business, but there was another part, a stronger voice in her now. And Falling-Day heard it, too, and understood that Elizabeth could not chance Nathaniel’s life, could not stand by while others fought for him.
It was unthinkable, and she would do it anyway.
“I would not,” Elizabeth said. “I cannot.”
“Thayeri,” said Falling-Day. It is proper so.
For the first time that day, Elizabeth felt she could breathe.
At the open bedroom door, Curiosity said, “You goin’ to take those babies into the wilderness?”
Elizabeth started, and came to her feet.
“How could you even think of such a thing? You always talkin’ about bein’ rational.”
“Curiosity,” Elizabeth said. “Let me tell you—”
“I heard enough. Don’t need to hear no more.” And Curiosity turned on her heel and disappeared back into the bedroom.
“She is the one you must convince,” said Falling-Day, reaching for her sewing. “She is the first step in this journey.”
In the bedroom, Curiosity was elbow deep in soapy water and dirty swaddling clothes.
“You don’t have to do that,” Elizabeth said.
Curiosity hummed her disagreement and never looked up.
Elizabeth said, “The way from Albany to Montréal is hardly the wilderness. It is almost as well traveled as the London Road.”
The steady rub and rush on the washboard did not falter. “Don’t talk to me about no London Road. You got a winter to contend with, here.”
“You just told me yesterday that the worst was over, didn’t you?”
Curiosity sat back on her heels and wiped her cheek with the back of a hand. “Well, I didn’t know you was getting set to go runnin’ off with them babies on your back, or I wouldn’t have.”
Elizabeth managed a smile at that. “They brought Blue-Jay through much rougher country six weeks ago, when the weather was worse. And I won’t be on foot.”
A long wheeze of impatience. “What, you intendin’ to spread your wings and fly? Oh, I see. You think the judge just goin’ to hand over his sleigh and team to get you as far as Albany, do you? He’ll try to tie you down, and you know it.”
“Oh, Curiosity. He’s tried that before, has he not?” With a sigh, Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed where the twins lay, kicking and burbling to each other.
With a voice much steadier than she thought it ought to be, Elizabeth said, “If I do not go, they will try Nathaniel and Hawkeye and Robbie as spies, with no one there to speak for them. Would you expect me to sit here and wait for news that they have been hanged?”
A slight tremor moved Curiosity’s shoulders, but she said nothing.
“You would go, if it were one of your own.”
“You are like one of my own,” Curiosity said, calm now.
“Then help me,” Elizabeth said. “I need your help.”
A long silence was broken only by the gurgling of the babies. Elizabeth sat on the bed she had shared with her husband and wondered if he would ever walk through the door again, if she would ever hear his voice. There was a curious numbness in her, a burning in her eyes that felt like somebody else’s tears. She could have no part of that, not now. With or without Curiosity’s help she would do this. Perhaps the older woman saw all this on her face, for her own expression softened.
“I’ll talk the judge into it and get the sleigh, on one condition.”
“I will not leave my children behind.”
“No, missy, you won’t.” Curiosity tilted up her chin, the dark eyes snapping. “You won’t leave me behind, either.”
Elizabeth suddenly found herself trembling. She folded her hands in her lap. “You would come with us?”
Curiosity wiped her arms with her apron. “Somebody got to keep you out of trouble,” she said. “Let’s go see the judge about that sleigh, ’cause I ain’t about to walk.”
Hannah’s hands would not work properly. She dropped a bowl, the sewing basket, her horn tablet, everything she picked up. No one seemed to notice her
sudden clumsiness. Her grandmother and aunt were sorting through clothing, wrapping dried venison in corn husks, mending snowshoes, getting ready to send Elizabeth and Runs-from-Bears on a long journey. Bears had gone off to the north face of the mountain to get the gold; Otter had been given willow-bark tea and sent to bed. Elizabeth and Curiosity were in the village.
From across the room Liam caught her gaze, and gestured with his eyes outside.
The stable was their place to talk. In warmer weather Hannah often shelled beans or ground corn here while Liam saw to his chores. Now it was empty, the horses boarded at the blacksmith’s for the winter; snow had drifted into every corner.
“Your father and grandfather will be home safe in another month,” Liam said. He sat on an upturned bucket, his face hatcheted with shadow.
“Yes,” Hannah said. She swallowed hard to banish the tears that swelled without warning.
“You’re going with her.” Liam pulled his hat from his head to examine the inside of it, as if the worn crown might tell him what he wanted to hear.
She nodded. “If she’ll let me.”
He laughed a little. “You’ll talk her into it. You’ve been wanting to go off ever since the summer.”
Last summer. She had been desperate with worry through those long weeks when her father and Elizabeth had been gone, on the run through the endless forests. Liam had still been living with his brother then, but he had always seemed to show up when she needed to talk. Now she barely knew what to say to him. If it was in her power she would leave him behind and go north with Elizabeth and Runs-from-Bears and Curiosity. He would stay here and split kindling and carry wood and water, clean possum and skin deer, lay traps. He would be more alone than she had been in the summer. She had had her grandmother and aunt and uncles.
“You will like Otter when you get to know him,” Hannah said. “He knows all the secret places on the mountain. He’ll show them to you.”
“Will he?” Liam’s voice was hoarse.
“You are one of us now. He will show you.”
“I’ve been thinking.” He never raised his eyes to her. “Maybe I should go stay with the McGarritys until you get back. The two women can manage with your uncle here.”
“No,” Hannah said, more forcefully than she meant to. “Don’t do that. You belong here.”
“So do you.”
She blinked. “She’ll need help with my sister and brother—”
His shoulders slumped in defeat. He nodded.
“You’ll stay?”
Liam would not meet her eye. “I’ll be the only white on Hidden Wolf when you go.”
It was like snow on the back of her neck; the chill ran down her spine to settle in her gut. She must have made some sound. His head came up and he studied her with eyes the blue of winter ice.
“I am not white.”
“To me you are,” he said.
The world blurred, the red-gold of Liam’s hair and the bright metal of the traps hung on the wall colliding in a rusty rainbow. Hannah pressed her hands to her eyes to stop it, to take away the look on his face. He thought he had paid her a compliment. I am the daughter of Sings-from-Books of the Kahnyen’kehàka people, she thought to say. I am the granddaughter of Falling-Day, great-granddaughter of Made-of-Bones, great-great-granddaughter of Hawk-Woman, who killed an O’seronni chief with her own hands and fed his heart to her sons. These names ran like a river through her veins, but they meant nothing to Liam. They were not the names of white women. She opened her mouth to say it again—I am not white—but at her shoulder was another grand mother. Cora Bonner, who had come here to the edge of the endless forests from across an ocean Hannah had never even seen. Granny Cora, with her fair skin and eyes of indigo blue and her gentle smile that hid a will as hard as flint. From her Scots grandmother Hannah had gifts she could not deny: a love of song, an appetite for words on the page, a talent for languages, the desire to roam. I am not white: it was only one part of the truth.
He was looking at her as he did sometimes, as Bears looked at Many-Doves or her father at Elizabeth. It was something she did not understand completely, and so she put it away, a kind of magic to be kept for later when she was older, woman enough to understand what it meant and strong enough to know what to do with it.
“Hannah!”
She paused at the door with her back to him.
“I’ll stay if you want me to.”
All her words had deserted her, and so she left him there in a pool of cold winter sunshine.
In the night, Runs-from-Bears came to Many-Doves. The sound of his step on the floorboards brought Elizabeth out of a light sleep. On the other side of the wall she heard Doves murmur in welcome. There were small creakings and sighs and a low laugh, suddenly hushed.
She would have gone outside, despite the cold and the late hour, but it would mean walking past them. Elizabeth rolled onto her side and buried her head in the covers, trying to banish the images that came to mind. She called up a different picture, one she had been pushing aside all day: Nathaniel in a gaol cell. It would not be the first time she had visited such a place. Her brother Julian had spent three months in the London debtors’ prison be fore Aunt Merriweather had paid his bills and seen him clear to get on the boat to New-York. He had left England only reluctantly. So much effort put into giving him a new start, and it had come to nothing. Julian was dead.
But Nathaniel was alive. Elizabeth wondered if they had blankets and a fire and decent food, if they were chained. Her breath caught hard at this thought. Nathaniel teased her about breaking Hawkeye out of gaol, but it was ridiculous to compare a pantry in the trading post secured with nothing more than a rusty lock to the military garrison in Montréal. She must trust that Will could speak persuasively for them, and if he could not, that he would know better than she how to effectively use the gold to bribe the right men. Together with Falling-Day she had sewed two hundred gold coins into sacks that could be worn next to the skin. She and Bears would carry it, but once in Montréal she would hand it over to Will Spencer if he had need of it.
But if Will should fail … It was a phrase that ran through her mind like a dirge. If Will should fail; if Somerville were intent on hanging these men he must see as nothing more than backwoodsmen, troublemakers, wayward colonists. Americans.
She would burn their garrison to the ground with her own hands before she let them take Nathaniel to the gallows. She had done worse for his sake, in the heat of summer. She remembered the weight of a strange rifle in her hands. Vous et nul autre. Shuddering, she pushed the memory away.
Many-Doves was murmuring, a soft sound. Leave-taking had its own rhythm, a song sung too often in this place on the edge of the endless forests. Bears would be gone from her and Blue-Jay for a month, at least.
Elizabeth was suddenly overwhelmed by sadness, and fear of what lay ahead, and a great loneliness. Journeys end in lovers meeting. How Nathaniel had smiled at that. She wanted him, and he could not come to her. “Very well, then,” she whispered to herself, alone in the dark. “I will come to you.”
7
The Schuylers’ Albany estate was awash in children. A group of boys played snow-snake in the pasture next to the house, in the garden little girls made snow angels, and at the gate where Galileo brought the sleigh to a stop sat two toddlers with fire-red cheeks, wrapped in such a collection of coats and shawls that they resembled apple dumplings. Elizabeth paused at the door, trying to gather both her courage and her energies. General Schuyler and his wife were the kind of friends who would welcome her in time of need, bound as they were to the Bonners over the last thirty years, and to Nathaniel in particular. Their kindnesses were many, but she worried that this unannounced visit might be too much for even them.
Curiosity read her mind. “They put up with your aunt Merriweather visitin’ for weeks at a time,” she said. “This little call ain’t goin’ to put them out of joint. It’s cold, Elizabeth. Hurry up.”
A maid with a baby on her h
ip answered her knock.
“May I help you?” She had a Dutch accent and a weary air about her. She seemed not at all surprised to find more guests at the door with infants in cradleboards on their backs. Elizabeth asked for the general, which brought a flicker of interest and surprise to the young woman’s face.
“The general is in the city,” she said, peering at Elizabeth more closely. “I’ll get the missus.”
“Another house full of women and children,” grumbled Curiosity, pulling her mittens off in the warmth of the hall.
“Not quite,” said Will Spencer from the sitting room, closing a book with a snap. “I believe I counted two of the grown sons and a son-in-law among the masses at table today. And there’s myself, of course.”
Elizabeth turned quickly, finding herself able to smile sincerely for the first time in a day. Will was little changed from the summer—the same slender form, dressed as elegantly as ever. “Cousin. It is very good to see you. Where is Amanda?”
“I fear my lady wife has been caught yet again between Mrs. Schuyler and my mother-in-law. They will be here in no time at all, rest assured. Come, Lizzy, let me help you. And Hannah, how good to see you again. Mrs. Freeman, there’s a fire in the hearth here. I see that Mr. Freeman is busy with the team—is that Runs-from-Bears with him?”
Curiosity sniffed, but a grin escaped her as they followed Will into the sitting room.
“You’ve picked a difficult time to travel, cousin,” said Will. “Soon the roads will be very bad with the thaw. Unless you were planning on a longer stay? You realize your aunt will try to keep you here. Lady Crofton takes a very dim view of traveling in such weather, and with infants.”
Elizabeth grimaced. “I remember. But this visit will be a very short one.” She disengaged Daniel from the second cradleboard and handed him to Hannah. “In fact, it’s quite a relief to have you alone for a moment before the others come in—”
“Elizabeth!” Aunt Merriweather’s voice echoed through the hall.
“—if you bear me any love, cousin, you will pack your bags and be ready to set off for Montréal with us first thing in the morning.”