by Sara Donati
Contempt filled Elizabeth’s mouth with bitterness. He thought anger would cripple her, that grief would rob her of purpose. How little men knew of women; how little this one knew of anything at all.
“I’m going to find them now,” she said to Bears in Kahnyen’kehàka. “Tell Will what has happened. And then go home. Go home and tell them that we will be there when we have my children back.”
He blinked at her. “Bring Moncrieff’s scalp with you.”
“With pleasure,” said Elizabeth. She put both hands on his face and then she did something she had never done before; she leaned forward and kissed Runs-from-Bears on the cheek. His skin was cold to the touch, but the arm that came up around her was strong.
“Farewell, my friend,” she said. She got to her feet, raised her chin, and met the major’s eager gaze. “Major Johnson.”
“Yes, Mrs. Bonner?”
“I find myself somewhat faint …” With a vague movement of her hand she indicated a pile of crates against the far wall of the warehouse. “My cousin the viscount is in rooms in the Rue St. Gabriel. Will you fetch him?”
Johnson snapped to action, marching off to bark orders at the soldiers still milling around the Nancy. She had pleased him with this sudden transformation into what he wanted and expected of her: a woman in need.
Bears reached out to squeeze her hand. Elizabeth squeezed back with all her strength, and then she slipped into the shadows.
She made her way quietly, feeling with her mind, throwing her senses out into the dark. How many times had Nathaniel spoken to her of this, the skill of moving through the night. You feel shapes even when you cannot see them. In English it sounded strange but in Kahnyen’kehàka it made perfect sense. Now she whittled down all her senses and moved fast, swallowing the sound of her own breathing and the hollow rattle of her heart. As she came around the far end of the warehouse a watchman passed with a lantern swinging on his pole; she pulled back until he was gone. Hoofbeats on the cobblestones; a man’s voice raised in question. She held her breath and then she ran.
It was very near morning, the sky lightening. She knew only that the Providence was farther downriver, and so she moved north, slipping in and out of the lanes that radiated off the docks. From a window overhead a baby’s cry sounded to her like a trumpet blast; her breasts throbbed with it. She dashed away her tears with an impatient hand and concentrated on the river.
More men were in the lanes, many of them carpenters and workmen headed toward a large boatworks, their tools hung about them. Someone must know where the Providence docked. Elizabeth pulled her cloak closer around herself and the hood lower over her face. In French she asked once, and then again and again; but there were too many ships in port at this time of year and all she got was curious glances, shrugs, grins. One of them offered her some of his breakfast, another asked a rough question she did not really understand. But what did she care for the laughter of these men, or what they thought of her? Her children were gone and she must get them back.
When the waterfront was crowded with laborers and seamen she moved out in the open. A merchant in a fine linen coat that might well have been cut in Paris or London turned away from her when she tried to speak to him, would not listen to her in French or English.
A young boy was at her heels; he had been there for some time before she realized. She stopped and turned to him. He stared back at her.
“Do you know of a ship called the Providence?”
He blinked.
Elizabeth swallowed down her desperation. “An American captain who whittles birds from wood?”
A spark of recognition: did she imagine it? She repeated herself in French.
“Oui,” said the boy, and thrust out his hand.
She took a coin from the sack still tied around her waist and pressed it into his palm; gold. But what difference did it make now?
He ran like the river. It took all of the last of her energy to keep up with him as he wound in and out of warehouse yards, through alleys where pigs rooted in filth, past row houses where women were hanging out steaming wash. “Is it far?” she asked him again and again. But he didn’t hear her, or didn’t care to answer. There was a brand on his cheek. He had limp blond hair and her children would never look anything like him, and still his dirty neck above a frayed blanket coat made her want to scream.
Another alley, closer to the waterfront again and reeking of tarpots and rotting fish. She could just see the masts of a single ship at the dock, and the sight made her heart leap into her throat.
At the last second she saw the man from the corner of her eye, the shape of him darting out of the doorway; she ducked too late. He had her by the cloak, spun her around to him. And she fell, still, tangled in her skirts, aware as she went of the jolt to her arm and hip and of the man himself: Mac Stoker. Of course, she thought, as consciousness flickered and threatened to vanish. What else?
She said, “If you try to stop me now I will kill you.”
One black brow shot up high. “Sure and you’re in no position to be making threats, Mrs. Bonner.”
She struggled, but he held her where she was with little effort. The truth was, she had no weapons but money and her wits; she would try the latter first.
“Let me go now, Stoker. I have no time for your games.”
He ignored her and spoke to the boy, who had pressed himself against the wall to watch, his eyes alight with excitement. “Away wit’ ye, boyo, you’ve done your job.”
Elizabeth’s gorge rose in her throat in a blazing rush: she had walked into this without thought. I am most certainly the stupidest creature Providence ever put on this earth.
Stoker got a better hold on her to haul her to her feet. “I did warn you, did I not, that there’s more than one kind of pirate on the St. Lawrence? And now your babbies are gone. Don’t worry yerself, I’m not after yer virtue or your coin. There’s a better profit in it if I deliver you safe and sound.”
Elizabeth jerked around to him. “Deliver me? Where? To whom? The governor?”
Stoker’s laugh had an edge. “Sure and you must have noted that I’m not overeager to do business wit’ the Crown, or I might well have turned you in two days ago for the reward. No, we’re off to the Jackdaw, me darlin’. My ship turns out to be of some use after all, it seems. Or so think your menfolk.”
PART II
___________
The Lass in Green
Love is swift of foot
Love’s a man of war
and can shoot,
and can hit from far.
—George Herbert, 1633
15
Just after sunrise Moncrieff came to tell Hannah what she had already figured out for herself. In tones meant to soothe and deceive he spoke of troops searching every ship, confusion on the docks, and a reunion in Scotland. He never used the word captive, but he didn’t need to. Hannah knew her people: they would shed blood before they saw their children sail off to a strange land alone. Perhaps they had.
And still Moncrieff stood in the middle of the stateroom and met her eye. He had to raise his voice above the twins’ shrieking. It unnerved him, and Hannah was glad, although she let him see none of it, not her anger or the many questions that she would not ask without giving him an advantage over her. Moncrieff talked and talked, but Hannah barely heard him, preoccupied as she was with a simple, bone-deep fear. She held it as she would hold any wild, clawed animal: tightly bound and close, lest it tear free and draw her blood.
When Moncrieff had run out of promises Hannah simply picked up her brother and sister, one on each hip, and waited for him to step aside so she could pass through the door.
“You needna go. You’re welcome to keep the use o’ these cabins,” he said. “I’ll send for Mrs. Freeman, as well.”
But she only stared at him, her silence marking him for the liar he was.
He flushed then. Gave in and let her leave. There was only so far she could go, anyway.
There wa
s no sign of Hakim Ibrahim, but Hannah found Curiosity just waking in the small sleeping cabin off the surgeon’s quarters, where she had spent the night. She was clear-eyed and finally free of fever, but she made Hannah repeat her story three times before it seemed to take root. They were at sea, not headed for home, and alone.
While they pieced together the few bits of information they had, Curiosity simply rocked the babies. They had settled into a new, softer wailing. Hannah looked away, afraid to be drawn into their web of misery and despair.
“Ain’t this a woeful mess.” Curiosity’s voice was still a little hoarse, and she cleared her throat more than once. “Elizabeth will be out of her head with worry. Not to mention the folks at home.” And her voice creaked and broke.
Hannah found she must ask, or let the question choke her. “Do you think they’re dead?”
“No.” Curiosity’s dark eyes met her own, full-on. “It’s Hawkeye and your daddy that Moncrieff wants. You and these babies, you nothing but a way to get to them. Your folks all alive and well, and not a day behind us—I’d wager my good right hand on it. Do you hear me?”
Hannah nodded. “There’s a wet nurse, Moncrieff says.”
“I figured. He wouldn’t want to deliver these children half dead to his earl, would he. The devil ain’t pure dumb, after all.”
“Do you think she had something to do with it?”
Curiosity turned as if she could look through the length of the ship to the bed where Giselle Somerville was most certainly still fast asleep.
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” was all she said. And she rocked the twins all the harder.
A scratching at the door began a procession of cabin boys with platters of food, water, and a note from the captain. This Curiosity did not even unfold before she dropped it into the chamber pot. To the startled cabin boy she said only, “Tell him we don’ need no apologies and no excuses. What we need is that wet nurse.”
The captain brought the woman to the door himself. Curiosity met him with an expression so dark and seething that Hannah felt the hair rising on her own nape. Pickering dropped his gaze, and withdrew backward.
The wet nurse was called Margreit MacKay. She was the wife of the first officer, delivered of a dead child in Québec; she had a face as bitter as arrowroot and dun-brown hair and eyes like a smear of slugs.
Lily and Daniel met the offered breasts with all the fury they could muster. Lily gave in and suckled only when hunger had grown stronger than her anger, falling into an exhausted sleep after a quarter of an hour, and before she had her fill. Daniel held out longer. Finally he nursed in a frenzy, working his fists and feet against the pasty, slack flesh, winding his fingers in a hank of loose hair until tears sprang into the woman’s eyes. When he had taken all Margreit MacKay had to offer, Hannah lifted him up against her shoulder and he collapsed into an indignant sleep, shuddering with every breath.
Mrs. MacKay rubbed her scalp and said, “Soor dooks, the baith o’ them. Spoilt wi’ gettin’ their own road.”
Curiosity had Lily in her arms, but she moved so quickly that Hannah could hardly follow it: she grabbed Margreit MacKay by the elbow and pushed her, bare breasts swaying, to the door.
“Three hours,” Curiosity said. “And don’ be late, or I’ll teach you what you don’ know about spoiled.” And she shut the door before the astonished Mrs. MacKay could protest.
But when Curiosity turned back her anger was already gone, replaced by a trembling in her hands that Hannah didn’t like to see.
Curiosity went to bed with the twins, thinking that her familiar smells and nearness might help them rest. Hannah, agitated and ill at ease, wandered into the middle cabin of the surgeon’s quarters, where Hakim Ibrahim examined and treated the sick and injured.
There was still no sign of the doctor. Hannah was both disappointed—she had a strong urge to see him, and to know what part he had played in all of this—and relieved to have some time alone in this cabin that was so pleasing to her. There were no carpets or velvet cushions here, just the clutter that she associated with healers. Folded bandages, baskets of roots, a huge medicine cabinet that took up an entire wall. Overhead dried herbs hung in bunches as they did at home, but here they swung with the rhythm of the hull against the waves.
Hannah made herself breathe in and out slowly, taking in smells strange and familiar: cinnamon, coriander, thyme, little-man root, mint and vinegar, cedar and sandalwood, camphor and rose oil. On her first visit here—she could hardly credit that it was only the day before yesterday—the Hakim had opened jars and bottles and named the powders and oils first in English and then in the musical, winding sounds of his own language, throaty and soft all at once. She had feared he would find her curiosity unseemly, but there was nothing of irritation or impatience in his manner.
Yesterday this medicine cabinet had seemed a wondrous thing, with its cubbyholes to keep jars safe from the rocking of the ship, dark glass bottles stoppered with cork, small drawers labeled with a strange, flowing script she could not read. When she had first come here with Runs-from-Bears, Hannah had wanted nothing more than time to explore this little room and all its treasures. She had wished for it. Perhaps she had called all of this down upon their heads with that wish.
There was a whispering of sound and Hakim Ibrahim came through the door, in his arms a wide, flat basket filled with bread and what seemed to be fruit. He was not so tall as the men of her family, but taller than Moncrieff or the captain, and the way he held his head put her in mind of a Kahnyen’kehàka elder. He did not have the age to be a sachem—she thought he was probably not much older than her father—but he had that way of looking, sharp but not cruel; his gaze cut but drew no blood. He was looking at her that way now, and the welcoming smile on his face faded.
“Are you unwell?” he asked.
Hannah knew that she must find out if this man was enemy or friend. If he was an enemy, they would have no one to trust on the ship. Her voice trembled because she could not help it. “Hakim, did you know about this?” She gestured with one hand to the porthole and the sea beyond.
Puzzlement showed on his face in a line that ran down between his eyebrows. “Did I know that we were to sail? Yes.”
“Did you know that we were to sail without my parents or grandfather?”
A ripple of surprise and disquiet moved across the even features. “I did not,” he said. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what has happened.”
While Hannah talked—in halting words at first and then more quickly, pouring out what she knew and what she only guessed—he stood listening, the high brow under the neatly folded red turban creased.
Hakim Ibrahim said, “Your stepmother was to sail with us to Scotland, as I understood it.”
Hannah’s head came up with a jerk. “We never agreed to sail to Scotland! We just wanted to go home to New-York.”
For a moment the Hakim considered the basket in his arms.
“Perhaps there is some reasonable explanation. I shall make inquiries. But first I should like to talk to you about how best to care for your brother and sister until your mother is restored to them. Perhaps you will share my breakfast with me while we talk.”
It might have been the steadiness of his hands, or the calm expression in his eyes, or perhaps it was just that he gave her a problem to work through, but Hannah felt some relief, a loosening of the knot in her belly. She nodded.
There were small dark fruits in the basket that he called dates, smooth-shelled nuts, and shiny, coarse-skinned globes of a deep orange color that Hannah associated with falling leaves. The Hakim held one out to her: a small sun caught in a web of fingers the color of earth mixed with ash. Hannah made a bowl of her hands and took it. It was heavy and dense, smooth to the touch, warm. She sat down with it, and resisted the urge to rub it against her face. But he was waiting for her to speak.
“They sent in a woman to nurse the twins,” she said. “Mrs. MacKay.” She did not care to speak Moncrieff’s name
out loud ever again, and was glad to see that it was not necessary.
“Ah.” He pushed his thumb into one of the orange fruits, and the scent of it burst through the room in a shower, light and still faintly sharp. “She is not yet healed from her loss, either in mind or body.”
“My sister and brother do not like her,” said Hannah, not wanting to hear about the Scotswoman’s problems. And then, in a rush: “I think her milk must be as bitter and mean as she is.”
Her grandmother would have chided her for her lack of charity, but the Hakim merely blinked. He tore the golden globe apart with a simple twist of his hands, and then he held out half of it to her, dripping with juice that ran in a river over the strong brown wrist. “Then we must find a better way. But first I must check on Mrs. Freeman, and you must eat.”
To Hannah’s surprise, there was livestock on board, some of the animals now on the open deck in pens and others in the hold. She did not see them, for she refused to leave Curiosity and the babies, but the Hakim sent the cabin boy away and he came back with eggs still warm from the nest and a jug of fresh goat’s milk. On the small stove where he made his decoctions and teas and cooked his own food, Hakim Ibrahim boiled two eggs until the whites had set, mixed them with a little coarse salt and some soft cheese, and gave them to Curiosity with his curious flat bread. He made a new tea while she ate, this one of horehound, bayberry, valerian, and little-man root. Hannah was given a cup of the goat’s milk and more of the bread.
“Never thought I’d be so glad of a nanny goat,” said Curiosity. She had Lily in her lap, simply because the baby would not let her go, just as Daniel clung to Hannah, touching her face with both hands, patting her cheeks as if to hold her there with him. Both of them were agitated, as unsettled as they had been as newborns although Hannah reckoned them to be a full sixteen weeks old.
Hakim Ibrahim worked the goat’s milk into the finely mashed rice until it was a smooth gruel. He looked up from the bowl at Lily and she stared back, round eyed.