by Sara Donati
“Unless Stoker finds her first.”
Hawkeye inclined his head. “She’s made an enemy of him, that’s true.”
From the courtyard gate came the sound of Squirrel’s voice, calling for them. They started in that direction in silence, and then Nathaniel stopped cold.
“You were thinking of sending the boy—What did she call him?”
“Luke.”
“You want to send Luke here, to Carryck.”
Hawkeye nodded. “The thought crossed my mind, but it ain’t my decision to make. You need to think that through.”
“Do you think he’d take an interest in this place?” Nathaniel asked.
“Most men would,” said Hawkeye. “Especially a young man with no land and no prospects. A young man raised Catholic.”
“I’d never see him,” Nathaniel said, feeling the loss already before he had even come to know the boy.
Hawkeye said, “I’d have to lay claim to Jamie Scott’s place here. I couldn’t do that without talking to Jean Hope and to Jennet first. Making sure they wanted it that way. Then you’d have to claim Luke as your firstborn.”
They were just twenty yards from the gates now. From the courtyard came the sound of children’s laughter, and Curiosity calling out after them. Elizabeth stood in the window with a baby on her arm. She had circles under her eyes, but there was a settled and peaceful look about her that he had last seen at home in Lake in the Clouds, before they had any idea of what lay ahead. She smiled when she saw him and raised her hand.
“She’s a good woman,” Hawkeye said. “It might hit her hard at first, but she don’t have an unfair bone in her body. She’ll come around to the idea.”
“Maybe before I do,” Nathaniel agreed, and he went in to tell Elizabeth about his son.
• • •
Hannah was waiting for her grandfather just inside the gate, and she pulled him aside. Something of the brightness in her had gone away with Robbie’s death, some of her trust in the world. And he remembered now the morning he had walked out of Montréal with Nathaniel. How he had watched him change as they walked, leaving not just Giselle Somerville but some of himself behind, too.
“What is it, Squirrel?”
She said, “I need your help. I can’t do it by myself.”
He put a hand on her shoulder, felt the strength of her and the determination. People looked at the color of her skin and thought of her mother, but there was so much of his Cora in her, a fiery heart and a will of iron.
“Tell me.”
In Mahican she said, “Will you come down to the village with me, Grandfather?” It was strange hearing that language of his boyhood in this place, and it did what she wanted it to: it shut out the rest of the world and drew them closer together.
“When?”
“After dark.”
He kept his face impassive. To smile would be to make light of this errand of hers, and he would not insult her. “What is it that takes us to the village after dark?”
“Before I leave this place I must kill a bear,” she said. And then, more quickly: “They blinded her and chained her to a post. She asked me to set her free of this place, and I gave her my promise.”
A fine tension was in her now, her whole body shaking. She said, “I cannot go home and leave her.”
“Then we’ll go down to the village after dark,” Hawkeye said calmly. “And we’ll do what needs to be done. Let’s go in to eat now.”
She shook her head. “I have to go see the Hakim, first. Will you tell them?”
He nodded, and then waited and watched her run off, fleet as a deer.
Hannah found Hakim Ibrahim packing his instruments into their cases. He had seen three people he tried to save buried within two days, but when she hesitated at the door he looked up at her with his usual kindly and helpful smile.
“Ah,” he said, wiping his hands on a bit of muslin. “I was hoping to see you this evening. I have something for you before you leave this place tomorrow.”
Hannah drew in a deep breath and let it out again. She had feared he might be angry with her—it had been many days since she had come to work with him or even to speak to him—and found instead that nothing had changed. She said, “Are you leaving, too?”
“Yes. Tomorrow I must return to Southerness. The Isis is bound for Bombay.”
“You are going home, too, then.”
From the worktable he took a leather case the size of a large book and he put it down before her. Then he stood back, bowing from the shoulders. “Yes. And I have a parting gift for you.”
Hannah was so surprised that she did not trust herself to speak. She ran a finger lightly over the leather and then, with unsteady hands, untied the lacings. Four scalpels, two with curved blades, forceps, probes, and suture needles, each secured by a leather strap in a bed of dark blue velvet. The instrument handles were made of ivory, slightly yellow with age.
He said, “It will be some time before you are skilled enough to use these, but I have no doubt that you will put them to good use one day.”
She blinked the tears back, and nodded. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome. Now, I believe you came to talk to me about something else. Lady Isabel, or Rob MacLachlan?”
“I know what killed Robbie. The bullet must have hit the artery, here—” She touched her own chest at the midline. “The aorta. But no one can tell me what Lady Isabel’s illness is called.”
He folded his hands in front of himself. “There is no name for the affliction that I know. I have seen it only rarely, and each time it ends in death. In the Al-Qanun fil-Tibb, Ibn Sina writes of tubercles that settle in the kidneys. The condition of her skin would make that likely. The only way to know would be to perform an autopsy, but given the circumstances …” He paused. “I thought it best not to impose on the earl’s grief.”
Hannah thought for a moment. “But maybe it would be a comfort to him, to know why she died.”
Hakim Ibrahim closed his eyes briefly and opened them again. “He believes that his lack of faith in her was what brought about her death, and even if I were to find her body full of tumors, I could not convince him otherwise.”
Hannah said, “Then he is in need of your help, too.”
The Hakim had a very sad smile. “You have a generous and compassionate spirit, Hannah. But if you are to be a good physician one day you must learn to recognize when your skills are not what is needed.”
“‘First do no harm,’” Hannah said, and now she understood this concept as she had not been able to understand it before. “But if you cannot help him, who can?”
“His God,” said the Hakim. “And perhaps his priest. Now I have a question for you. Will you write to me, and tell me of your studies in medicine?”
“Yes,” said Hannah. “I would like to do that.”
“Then we will not say good-bye.” The Hakim smiled. “For our discussions do not have to end.”
She hesitated at the door, testing the weight of the surgical kit in her hands. “Do you really think I can be a physician one day?”
He bowed from the shoulders. “Of this, my friend, I am very sure.”
32
The smell of the sea met them at Edinburgh, coming up suddenly as the coach started down a hill toward the city. Elizabeth sat up straighter, and even Hannah roused herself out of her daydreams.
“Headed home.” Elizabeth said it aloud now and then, perhaps just to convince herself that it was really true. They would spend this evening with Aunt Merriweather and tomorrow they would board a ship. When they next stepped onto land it would be in New-York harbor.
Curiosity’s thoughts were taking her in the same direction. She said, “Lord willing, we’ll be in Paradise before summer’s done. In time for the corn harvest, Hannah. Did you think of that?”
Hannah nodded. “In time for the festival at Trees-Standing-in-Water.”
“Ain’t even home yet and she ready to run off again,” Curiosity said with
a sigh. “Me, I ain’t goin’ any farther than Lake in the Clouds. Don’ care if I never see another city. Or smell one, for that matter.” And she sniffed at Edinburgh, ripe with waste in the summer sun.
• • •
They came into the High Street, the women and children in the coach while Hawkeye, Nathaniel, and Will rode, surrounded by Carryck’s men. The earl would take no chances with their safety; it would soon be common knowledge that Daniel Bonner of New-York State had signed a document declaring himself the son of James Scott, and with that they would become targets of the Breadalbane Campbells. It did not matter that Hawkeye would keep his vow to leave Scotland and never come back again. It did not matter, because the grandson he had left behind in Canada had made no such vow.
Daniel played peacefully in Elizabeth’s lap. Nathaniel’s second-born son. She still had not come to a quiet place with this idea, but she would in time. Nathaniel had expected her to be angry, or hurt, or worried about her own children’s claims, but thus far she had felt nothing but confusion and some vague curiosity. He was watching her now from horseback, looking for some sign of her discontent, waiting for her anger to swell up.
Someplace inside, Nathaniel still believed that she regretted the life she was leaving behind, and only time would convince him otherwise.
“I suppose that Merriweather aunt of yours will want us all to set down with her,” Curiosity said, jerking Elizabeth out of her daydreams. “She’ll want the whole story.”
“I suppose she will,” Elizabeth agreed.
“But the whole story hasn’t happened, yet.” Hannah looked up from the piece of ivory she had been studying.
“Then we will tell her as much as we know,” said Elizabeth. “What is that in your hand, Squirrel?”
She held it up. Not ivory at all, but a tooth yellowed with age, long and curved.
“A bear fang,” Curiosity said, leaning forward to get a better look at it, and catching Lily’s hand away as she grabbed. “I didn’t know there were bears around Carryck.”
“There aren’t,” said Hannah, closing her fist around it. “Not anymore.”
Curiosity was looking more closely at Hannah’s face now, with concern and some disquiet. As Elizabeth was looking, seeing something new there in her familiar and beloved face, some equanimity that she had left behind her somewhere on this long journey and now found again. Robbie’s sudden passing had moved her in ways Elizabeth had not quite imagined.
“Did it come from Jennet?” asked Curiosity.
“Jennet has one just like it,” said Hannah. “She will wear it on a string around her neck.”
“Elizabeth, my dear, we must see a milliner before you sail. To go about with no protection from the sun, have you forgotten all your training? Something must be done, for you are already as brown as a—as a—”
“As an Indian,” supplied Hannah easily, looking at them over the rim of her teacup. She sent her father a sidelong glance, but Nathaniel kept his face impassive. He knew better than to get in the middle of one of Aunt Merriweather’s discussions about hats.
“I admit I have not been thinking of my complexion these last few months,” Elizabeth agreed, wiping biscuit crumbs from Lily’s mouth. “But I promise to wear a hat on the journey home.”
Aunt Merriweather had a way of rearing back with her head to look down the slope of her nose that always put Nathaniel in mind of a cross-eyed bird. She was doing it now, her mouth pursed into a little beak.
“I will charge Amanda with making sure of it,” she said. “If it were not for my lumbago, I would make the journey myself. Heaven knows what you young women will get up to, you are all so set on your independence. I did so count on bringing Kitty home to Oakmere with me, and see how she changed her mind at the last minute. I am still most seriously displeased, but perhaps you can persuade her, Elizabeth, once you are home again. Certainly you must see to it that she doesn’t fall under Dr. Todd’s influence. Such a very flighty young woman; she requires your firm hand if she cannot have mine.” She sniffed. “Of course, you might still get it into your head to turn privateer and sail off to China, children in tow. Certainly my son-in-law already looks the part.” And she scowled as if she had Will Spencer before her.
Elizabeth got up to plant a kiss on her old aunt’s cheek. “You are worried for us,” she said. “But please be assured, we have no interest in going anywhere but home, and that as quickly as possible.”
“Do not try to mollify me,” said her aunt, swatting at her with a folded fan. “I shall worry if it pleases me to worry, every day until I have word of your safe arrival. Now your husband has been waiting for you these twenty minutes, and his patience is not eternal, I am sure of it. Go on, the two of you, but do not be long.”
They went to see the ship that would take them home. Hawkeye and Will had been here before, as had Thomas Ballentyne in his new role as Carryck’s agent and factor. Even now Carryck’s men milled around the dock, and there they would remain until the Bonners were safe away.
And still, Nathaniel knew maybe better than Elizabeth did herself that she would not rest easy tonight unless she had examined the ship and met its captain and officers.
She was called Good Tidings, a small but comfortable packet on her way to New-York with the mails and a shipment of Scotch whisky for the governor and porcelain for his wife. A fast ship, and not so large that she would attract the attention of privateers—but well armed enough to repel anyone who showed unwelcome interest. The captain and owner was a Yorker by the name of George Goodey, a small man with a stern expression and a taciturn way about him; he showed them their quarters, had his sailors run out the guns for Nathaniel’s inspection, and then he bade them goodbye. He suited Elizabeth very well.
“Curiosity will lock horns with him,” she noted as they walked back to her aunt Merriweather’s lodgings. “And she will enjoy every minute of it.”
“It’ll be close quarters,” Nathaniel said. “Your cousin may get a little itchy.”
“Amanda is too pleased to have Will back again—even her mother cannot interfere with her happiness.”
“And what about you, Boots?” he asked, tucking her arm tighter under his own.
“Me? I would paddle a canoe home if that’s what it required,” Elizabeth said. “We have been gone only a little more than four months, but it feels like so much longer.”
They walked on in a comfortable silence for a while, and then she turned to him suddenly, and stretching up on tiptoe, she kissed him there on the High Street, with people all around.
“What was that for, Boots?”
“For keeping our children safe.”
“You’re thinking of Isabel.”
She nodded. “I can hardly think of anything else but Robbie, and Isabel.”
A flush was creeping up her cheeks, anger and grief pushing her to sudden tears. Nathaniel put his arm around her as they walked, willing to wait for her to put words to what she was feeling. Until she did that, she would have no peace.
It came in a low rush. “I cannot imagine what Carryck is suffering now, to have lost his daughter not because she was disloyal, but because he was too blind to see Moncrieff’s true nature.”
Neither did we see him for what he was, not at first. Nathaniel thought of saying this, but held his tongue, knowing full well that they would have to deal with it soon enough.
She said, “The look on Carryck’s face when we took our leave—I don’t think he will ever forgive himself for refusing to go to Isabel when he had a chance, there at the end. And perhaps he does not deserve forgiveness.” She was flushed with remembering, still full angry.
“You know I’m not likely to make excuses for the man,” Nathaniel said, as evenly as he could manage. “But it seems to me he knows well where the blame lies and he ain’t shirking it. I don’t know that he’d survive all this, if it weren’t for Jean Hope and Jennet. And you’ll forgive me, Boots, if I point out that the man buried his priest and his daughter wit
hin a day of each other. That’s punishment enough.”
She shook her head, quite forcefully. “He is getting what he wanted, Nathaniel. A way to keep Carryck free of the Breadalbanes, and an heir. Do you not worry about sending … Luke to him, knowing now how he dealt with his own daughter?”
“I don’t know that Luke will want to come here,” Nathaniel said slowly. “He’s more of a stranger to me than Carryck is. And the truth is, it don’t feel real, yet, the news about the boy. You’re asking me if I trust Carryck with a son I don’t know, and might never see again. I’ve been thinking about that all day long, and I’ll tell you what. He’s a man already, as old as I was when he came into the world. We’ll tell him what he needs to know about this place, give him the good and the bad of it, and he’ll make his own decision. And if he wants to come here and if that solves Carryck’s problems, well then, I’ll be glad for both of them, Boots. But I know one thing for sure, and maybe it’s something I can see and you can’t. Carryck will be relieved to get the boy if that puts an end to his problems, but there’s no joy left in this world for him. He buried that part of his life with his daughter. And Moncrieff.”
They had stopped walking while he said this, and Elizabeth was looking up at him with an expression divided between surprise and acknowledgment. A look came over her, the one that meant she was casting back through her memory for some words she had read somewhere, something to help her make sense of what she was feeling. And then she had them, and she spoke them out loud, but more for her own benefit than his.
“His flawed heart,—
Alack! too weak the conflict to support;
’twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly.”
“That’s about it, I’d say. Now where did that come from?”
“King Lear,” said Elizabeth. “A man who misjudged his daughter and paid for that mistake very dearly.”
“Maybe I should read that book,” Nathaniel said, trying to strike a lighter tone. “The days ain’t far off when Squirrel will be moving off on her own, and I suppose I should be ready.”