by Sara Donati
“I am sorry. Please forgive me. I do appreciate you leaving your family behind to come with us, you know.”
“I ain’t looking for no apologies,” Curiosity said briskly, running a hand along the swaddling clothes that had been hung to dry on a string across the cabin. “Came along of my own free will.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “So you did. I will always be in your debt.”
With a grunt Curiosity sat down on the edge of the bunk and, untangling Lily from Elizabeth’s lap, began to change her.
“Seem to me there ain’t any call for such talk between us. I know you don’t like to be reminded, but you made my Polly a happy woman and I won’t ever forget it.”
“What did Elizabeth do for Polly?” asked Hannah, leaning in the open shutters on her elbows.
“Nothing,” said Elizabeth. “At least, nothing to discuss right now. Is that fresh water you’ve got there?”
Curiosity raised a brow in Elizabeth’s direction but addressed Hannah, who passed a bucket through the window.
“Your stepmama bought Benjamin and his brother free from the Gloves, is what she done, so as my Polly could marry a freed man. Got that Quaker cousin of hers from Baltimore to handle the money, but it come from her and Nathaniel. And look at her, blushing to hear the truth told plain.”
“Not at all,” said Elizabeth, somewhat less than truthfully. “It’s just that Hannah’s sleeve is covered with blood.”
“It isn’t mine,” Hannah said. “Mr. Little took some salmon this morning, and I helped with the cleaning. We’ll have a good dinner today.”
“Is that so?” snorted Curiosity softly, tickling Lily under the chin until she got a smile. She traded her for Daniel, who yawned in her face. “Know as much about cookin’ as they do about storytellin’. No tellin’ what injury that Little might do to a good salmon.”
“Oh, Curiosity,” said Hannah brightly. “Mr. Little asked if you’d come along and have a look at Elijah’s foot. It isn’t healing the way he thought it would. I think it might need to be opened up.”
“You see?” asked Curiosity, as if an infected foot told all that needed to be told about Mr. Little’s merits as cook, doctor, and human being. “I’ll be along as soon as I’ve wiped your little brother’s hindside. And don’t you start tending that foot without me, child. You hear?”
Hannah grinned, and disappeared into the sunshine.
“It’s good to see her in high spirits,” said Elizabeth. “We should reach Chambly tomorrow, and things will not be so cheery once we do.”
Curiosity pressed her lips together firmly. “I expect Canada mud wash off just like any other,” she said. “You want to come along, have a look at this foot?”
“I think not.” Elizabeth pulled her clothing to rights. “You go ahead, and I’ll take these two for some sun while it lasts.”
She strapped the babies to her chest to go up on deck, where they mouthed their fists and stared wide-eyed at the great expanses of snapping white sail. There was a sailor at the helm, two mending rope near the aft mast, and another swabbing the main deck; she supposed the rest of the crew was below, crowded together around Curiosity and her patient. On the quarterdeck she saw that Will and Runs-from-Bears were in deep conversation, their backs to her. Elizabeth made no attempt to get their attention, glad of a few minutes of rare near-solitude in the open air.
The wind was high, whipping the water into cats’-paws. In the distance the mountains of the endless forests were still dusted with snow, dappled with shadow and early light. Elizabeth studied the east coast, trying to catch sight of some familiar landmark—she had traveled down that very shore in the previous summer by canoe—but it was a blur of cottonwood and maple, willow and black ash, showing only the vaguest tinge of new green here and there.
Overhead a crowd of ring-billed gulls screeched, pin-wheeling with the wind. The babies blinked up at them thoughtfully, their round cheeks sharp pink in the fresh air.
A spit of land off a small bay capped by a tumble of boulders sparked some vague memory that she could not quite grasp. Nathaniel could put English, Mahican, and Kahnyen’kehàka names to every corner of the lake; perhaps he had told her a story about this place.
A sailor swung by, long arms roped with muscle. He had a face like a pickled walnut and a thin mouth bracketed by crusty corners; a carved pipe swayed there with every step he took. Elizabeth beckoned to him and he paused and touched his cap.
“Pardon me, but could you please tell me what that bay is called?” She pointed with her chin.
The bristled jaw worked. He spoke around the pipe in clipped Yankee rhythms. “That there’s Button Bay, or so we calls it,” he said.
“Button Bay?”
“Ayuh, it’s a strange thing, missus. Walk along the shore there and you’ll find that all the stones have got holes in ’em, you see, like buttons. Young’uns like to string ’em together.” Eyes like polished pebbles fixed on the babies. “It’ll be a while afore these two get up to such games. A lad and a maid, ain’t that so?”
Elizabeth nodded, and he leaned in to peer into Daniel’s face.
“Look at ’em eyes,” said the sailor, his grin showing off teeth like oak pegs. “Green as the sea when she’s feeling feisty. Make a sailor one day, he will.”
Daniel suddenly let out a great chuckle, the small nose crinkling and bare gums showing pink. Elizabeth started, for while the babies smiled often, neither of them had yet produced real laughter. Lily looked at her brother with some puzzlement.
“You see!” said the sailor. “He knows the truth when he hears it, don’ he now? There’s no stoppin’ a lad born to the sea.”
“Did you go to sea as a boy?” asked Elizabeth, charmed by his grin and his admiration of her children.
“Ayuh, so I did.” He pulled the pipe from his mouth and cocked his head over the side to spit, never taking his eyes from her. “The Cards of Port Ann was all born for the sea, every last one of us. Why, I saw China when I was no more than fourteen. Believe it or not, missus, when I were seventeen we took a merchant bound home for Bristol. Crippled in a storm north of Cuba, near broke in half. We took her neat and simple before she went down and my good captain sent me home with forty pound of fancy spice, a whole ton of sugar, fifty gallons o’ rum, and near a thousand dollar—me! Tim Card as you sees before you, not a respectable whisker on my face that day I walked into me mam’s kitchen and thumped down the coin. Gave it all to her, too, every bit of it. Except the rum, of course. She was a bible-reader, was my mam. Had no use for rum.” Another flash of the teeth.
“You’ve always sailed on privateers, then?” asked Elizabeth, a bit unnerved. She had first come to New-York on a British packet, and during that long journey she had heard many stories from the captain, a former Royal Navy officer who detested privateers as much as he feared them. But Tim Card carried on, eager to tell his story.
“Oh, ayuh. Lobster pots left me cold, you see. And I ne’er was what you’d call the military type. The merchants, now—what’s in it for a lad, I ask you? Two brothers before me went out on a merchantman and wound up pressed into a Tory frigate. And that’s the last we saw of Harry and Jim. Not for me, says I to my mam and off I went to find my fortune. Sailed ten year with Captain Parker on the Nancy and longer still with Captain Haraden. P’rhaps you heard tell of him, how we took the Golden Eagle in the Bay of Biscay. Not long after that I come up here to crew on the spider catchers.”
“This must be very tame, after your earlier adventures.”
The sharp gaze moved over the water. “Don’ let the looks of her deceive you, missus. She’s got her tricks, and you’d best not forget it.” He rubbed his cheek with horny nails so that the stubble rasped.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “You may not believe it to see me as I am dressed now, Mr. Card, but I am not unfamiliar with these waterways. Last summer I traveled the full length of this lake with my husband, by canoe.”
That brought the old sailor up sho
rt. He narrowed one eye at her, his head cocked, sparrowlike.
“Is that so?” he said thoughtfully. His gaze took in her good gray traveling gown, the lace at her neck and wrists, the heavy shawl, and then he shrugged. “If you traveled these waters with Nathaniel Bonner you were in good hands, then.”
“Do you know my husband?” Elizabeth asked, surprised and pleased and eager for any word of him.
“Ain’t many in this part of the world who don’t know of Hawkeye and his boy Nathaniel,” grinned the old sailor. “I’ve laid eyes on him once or twice. He would’ve made a fine sailor.” The bright gaze was drawn back to the lake. “Ayuh, I never felt the need to go back to the sea after I been on this water. And privateering is a younger man’s game, truth be told.” He peered at her. “You’ve heard tales of the privateers, I suppose. Little better than pirates.”
“I’ve heard a few stories,” Elizabeth admitted.
He grunted, clamping down anew on the stem of his pipe so that it bobbed up and down. “Sailin’ this part of the world I heard a few tales of the Mohawk,” he said thoughtfully. “Torturin’ women, eatin’ white babies, all that. But I expect you know different, livin’ together with them the way you do. Got that girl of Nathaniel’s, don’ you. Likely maid, that one. Keen eyed, sharp.”
Elizabeth observed him closely but she could see nothing untoward in his expression. “I suppose you mean to tell me I shouldn’t believe the tales I’ve heard of American privateers?”
He shrugged, shifting the coil of rope on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t go that far, missus. There’s some vicious sorts runnin’ the seas and not all of ’em fly the Jolly Roger open like. I knowed a few who would as soon toss these young’uns overboard as look at ’em—”
Elizabeth’s arms tightened around the twins, who squirmed in protest.
“—but I ain’t one o’ them,” he finished. “And I ne’er sailed with any such. Most is just merchants, missus. Interested in the profit, is all. What ain’t profitable goes over the side, you see.”
“I’ll remember that,” Elizabeth said, her voice cracking a bit as she tried to smile.
“Button Bay, we calls her,” said Tim Card, his eyes moving over the shore. He touched his cap as he turned away.
If good fortune had been with them, they might have left the Washington at Fort Chambly and reached Montréal by sleigh in less than a day’s time on the ice road. But all Elizabeth’s prayers for a late freeze went unheard: they managed to portage around the Richelieu rapids to find a world made of mud and water. On the marshes the ice was porous and would no longer support the weight of a sleigh of any size. This left the summer route, difficult even in the driest weather but impossible in the spring thaw. Captain Mudge summarized the problem with his usual directness.
“Enough mud for a world of pigs,” he said. There was a long and involved story that Elizabeth only half heard, of an ox mired to the shoulders and left to bellow itself to death after a day of fruitless efforts to shift it. The story seemed to distract Hannah, which was a useful thing.
There was no help for it: they must take the longer route, which meant more portages, a transfer to whale-boats that would take them over whitewater to Sorel, and finally the seeking out of another schooner to take them on the last leg from Sorel upriver to Montréal. It had sounded to Elizabeth like a dirge as the captain intoned each step of the journey. To hide her frustration took all of her self-control; for the first time she found herself consciously wishing that she could have left all three of the children safely in Paradise. Without them she would have taken on the more direct route to Montréal, mud and all.
It was Curiosity and Runs-from-Bears who put their heads together and came up with a plan that seemed ideal on its surface, and then occasioned the first disagreement Elizabeth had had with Will Spencer since they were children. To the suggestion that Will travel ahead on the shorter route, he responded first with a thoughtful silence and then with the acknowledgment that he did not like to leave Elizabeth alone for the rest of the journey.
“But I am not alone,” she said to him, quite confused at his hesitation. They were on the quarterdeck, wrapped in cloaks and shawls against an unpleasantly cold but not quite freezing drizzle. They had left the fine weather behind them on the great lake; ahead of them Fort Chambly’s great hulk shone in the dense fog like a castle in a fairy tale.
“Mrs. Freeman is an excellent traveling companion,” Will agreed. “Her good common sense has served us well already. But to travel without sufficient male protection is something I cannot countenance, cousin.”
Elizabeth bit back a laugh. “Runs-from-Bears is more than sufficient protection,” she pointed out. “He guided you and my aunt from Albany to Paradise last fall, and me through the endless forests in much more difficult circumstances. And for that matter, I have traveled the wilderness here alone for days at a time. Under the circumstances, cousin, your concern is a luxury that I cannot afford. My first thought is for Nathaniel and his father. I hope you will make them your first concern, as well.”
His pale, good-natured face shone with the rain, or perhaps with perspiration; she could see how uneasy it made him to think of leaving her to travel ahead. But for all his quiet ways, Will was no coward. He met her eye directly.
“If you are certain, Elizabeth. I will trust your judgment.”
Now she did smile. “I am certain. You serve me best by leaving me now.” She glanced around them, and certain that they were unobserved, Elizabeth pressed a small but very heavy sack into his hand. “You may well have need of this.”
He tested the weight with a surprised expression, but before he could ask any of the logical and reasonable questions that must immediately come to him, she grasped his sleeve. And in a whispered rush: “Please don’t ask, not right now. Sometime I will tell you the whole story, but for the moment I must ask you to think of this gold as your own, and having nothing to do with me or with Nathaniel. You can use it, Will, but I cannot, not without occasioning questions that will bring us into greater difficulties. Spend it all, if it will help in Nathaniel’s cause.”
One pale brow rose in a surprised arch. “It seems you have been up to some high adventure, Lizzy. I will want that story in every detail once we are reunited in Montréal.”
“You shall have it,” Elizabeth said, full of gratitude and relief.
And still Elizabeth found it very hard to watch her cousin set off from the fort in the company of a guide Runs-from-Bears had found for him. She must content herself with the idea that he might be in Montréal in two days’ time. Perhaps Nathaniel and the others would be free when she finally arrived with the children. If Will Spencer could manage that feat, Elizabeth would tell him anything he wanted to know, although she feared he would not take the story well. He might be her trusted friend, but he was also an Englishmen of a certain class.
Hannah’s warm hand on her arm brought her out of her thoughts.
“Your cousin is not much like other Englishmen,” she said, offering her highest compliment. She spoke Kahnyen’kehàka, as they usually did when they were alone.
Elizabeth laughed. “I was just thinking the very opposite. What strikes you as less than English about Will?”
Hannah’s expression was earnest. “There is no greed in him,” she said finally. “He makes no fist.”
Struck silent by the truth of this, Elizabeth turned again to catch some sight of her cousin, but he had disappeared into fog.
9
The butcher was snoring again in deep, wet roars that hauled Nathaniel out of an uneasy doze. There was a scuffle and a dull thud as the young pig farmer’s clog connected with flesh. Denier’s snoring hitched and trailed away with a mutter.
Nathaniel’s stomach gave a loud rumble, and he rolled onto one hip on the wooden cot that he shared with his father, the sparse layer of straw crackling. Hunger focused the mind, he reminded himself. And on a Tuesday morning near dawn, with Thompson alone on guard duty, there was good reaso
n to be focused. They were all awake, and waiting. All except Denier, whose snoring was rising again like a tide.
One by one the men got up to use the overflowing bucket in the corner: Moncrieff shuffling and yawning, Robbie with a groan, Hawkeye tense and silent. Pépin’s hobnailed clogs struck blue sparks on the cobblestones. Nathaniel took his turn last, closing his mind to the stench.
The door swung open with a scrape, bringing a wave of fresher air and the tang of burning tallow. Thompson filled the narrow frame, candlelight outlining a huge jaw. Slack-jawed, yellow of complexion, he sought out Hawkeye’s gaze.
“Fifteen minutes,” he mouthed. He stuck the candle on the shelf next to the door and turned away as if the women waiting behind him were invisible, which Nathaniel supposed was true. A coin of large enough denomination could make a man like Thompson blind to almost anything. Luckily Nathaniel had left most of his silver with Iona, who knew how to put it to good use.
The women slipped in quietly, their arms straining at the weight of the split-oak baskets. Pépin’s mother, her face hidden by a deep hood, and the serving woman from the inn. Nathaniel saw Adele’s eyes flitting through the dark cell to fix on Moncrieff and flit away again.
Pépin embraced his mother, and she pulled his head down into the curve of her cloak where she could talk to him, a hushed whisper in a country French that only Denier would have understood, had he been awake. Adele busied herself with unpacking the food onto the old board that served as a table. There were meat pies, bacon, sausage, cheese wrapped in brine-soaked cloth, two massive loaves of dark bread and a smaller corn cake still warm from the oven, a crock of beans, and a small keg of ale. To men living on gruel and dry bread, it looked a feast, but it would be a week at least before there would be any more. If other plans did not come to fruition first.
Adele had come to the bottom of the baskets: a bit of soap, some tobacco, and a half-dozen fat tallow candles. She straightened and caught Nathaniel’s eye.