Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  Elizabeth said, “Can’t it wait?” And knew it could not; Hannah simply could not walk away from such a useful growing thing. That she had gone a night without rest was immaterial: she could have run up the mountain and trotted back down again without stopping, or needing to.

  With an apologetic look, Hannah pulled a small spade from her basket and knelt down to lift the plant. And froze, as still and attentive as a deer who comes upon a hunter in an unexpected place.

  Almost directly before her was a pair of shoes, sitting atop a low oak stump in the early morning sun, as if put there to dry after a walk through the bush. Roughly cobbled and worn down to almost nothing, with scratched blue buckles. Elizabeth had never seen such shoes on anybody in Paradise.

  A stranger on the mountain then, and not far off.

  The thing to do would be to walk on. It was foolish to even consider confronting a stranger (a trespasser, Elizabeth reminded herself) on the mountain, no matter how curious the footwear such a person might wear. Not with the solemn charge entrusted to her this morning; not as weary as she was. The men would see to it. With the osprey still screeching and wheeling over the lake, Elizabeth was staring at the shoes and arguing silently with herself when Hannah took things into her own hands and pushed the hobblebushes aside.

  In a little hollow under an outcropping of stone, a woman lay curled into a ball. Her skin was darker and richer in color than the earth she had slept on; under a homespun jacket her belly was round and taut: yet another child getting ready to fight its way into the world. The vague curiosity that had come to Elizabeth at the sight of the blue buckles was replaced immediately with dread as the woman pulled away from them, her face blank with fear.

  It was more than eight years since Elizabeth had last encountered an escaped slave, but she knew with complete certainty that this young woman had run away from someone who considered her to be property.

  She said, “You needn’t fear us. Have you lost your way?”

  For a moment she didn’t move at all, and then she scrambled up into a sitting position, looking from Hannah to Elizabeth and back again. Under a high forehead her eyes were luminous with fever, and a trippling pulse beat at the hollow of her throat, as frantic as a bird’s.

  “I am Elizabeth Bonner. This is my stepdaughter Hannah.”

  Some of the fear left the woman’s face. Her mouth worked without sound, as if language were a burden she had left somewhere on the trail behind her; when her voice finally came to her it was unusually deep and hoarse.

  “The schoolteacher. Nathaniel Bonner’s wife.” She stifled a cough against the back of her hand.

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth. “Do you know my husband?”

  “I heard stories, yes, ma’am.”

  Hannah said, “You’re ill.”

  She nodded and the turban wrapped around her head slipped; the girl’s hair had been shaved to the scalp not so long ago. With trembling fingers she set it to rights. “Been sleeping on the wet ground.”

  “Were you trying to find someone in the village?” It was as close as Elizabeth could come to asking what she really wanted to know, but it was Hannah who answered.

  “She was looking for Curiosity,” she said, evoking the name of Elizabeth’s closest friend, a woman she loved and trusted as well as any of her own family. To hear Curiosity Freeman’s name in connection with a runaway slave in Paradise made complete sense—and was utterly alarming. And what was Hannah’s role in this? Elizabeth might have asked, but her stepdaughter had already turned her attention to the stranger and spoke to her directly.

  “Curiosity wasn’t where she was supposed to be, was she? She had a birth to attend to, but you couldn’t know that. So you left again.”

  The rest of the fear drained from the young woman’s face, and Elizabeth saw that she was burning with more than one kind of fever. There was fierce purpose and an acute intelligence in those dark eyes.

  She reached into the pocket tied by a string around her waist and held out her hand to them. In the center of her work-hardened palm lay a thin round disk of wood, its edges carved in a geometric pattern, and a white stone lodged at its center. The sight of it made Elizabeth’s heart leap in her chest.

  “Where did you get that?”

  She coughed again, and her fingers swept to a close over the bijou, a gesture as elegant as the folding of a wing. “Almanzo Freeman set me on the path. He gave it to me.”

  “Almanzo? But he lives—”

  “In New-York City, yes ma’am. More than two weeks now I been on my way. Last stopped just outside of Johnstown.”

  The last time Elizabeth had made the journey from New-York City to Johnstown, it had taken a full seven days by boat, stage, and wagon. To walk this far from Johnstown would require another two days at the very least; perhaps more, with the April muck at its worst. She could hardly imagine what this young woman had managed on her own, in strange countryside.

  “Daughter.” Elizabeth spoke in the Mohawk language of Hannah’s mother’s people. “What do you know about this?”

  “I know enough,” answered Hannah calmly, in the same language. “But there’s no time to explain right now. She’s sick, and we can’t take her through the village by day.”

  It was a question, and it wasn’t. In her usual competent fashion Hannah had already decided what must be done, and she simply waited for Elizabeth to come to the same conclusion.

  And how was she to put a coherent thought together with the osprey screaming and two women staring at her? One of them young enough never to give her own safety a thought; the other with good reason to fear for her life. A young woman in need of help, sent here by Curiosity’s son Almanzo, a free man of color living in the city. There were people in Paradise who would take pleasure in returning this woman to whatever punishment waited. Perhaps they would take her child from her.

  Elizabeth was aware of the fragile bundle in her arms, suddenly as heavy as iron. She said, “We will take you home with us, Miss—What is your name?”

  The young woman straightened her shoulders and took a hitching breath. “Selah Voyager.” And then: “I’m thankful for your kindness, ma’am, but I’ll just wait here till dark.”

  “Nonsense,” said Elizabeth, more sternly than she intended. “You are hungry and fevered, and this is not such an isolated spot as you might think, so close to the lake. You are much safer at Lake in the Clouds. As are we.”

  Before they were even in sight of the cabins, the sound of children’s shrieking laughter came to them. Selah Voyager jerked to a sudden stop and turned toward Elizabeth.

  Hannah said, “There’s nothing to fear. The children dive into the water in the mornings and the cold makes them howl.”

  But it wasn’t the children’s laughter that had brought Selah up short: her gaze was fixed at a point behind them. Elizabeth knew without turning that someone stood there, and that this young woman had ears keen enough to have heard him, although Elizabeth had not.

  Nathaniel said, “I went down to ask after you two, and here you are almost home without me. I see you’ve brought us some company.”

  The truth was, her husband’s voice had such power over her that Elizabeth’s anxiety simply gave way, replaced by relief and pleasure. His hand was on her shoulder and she covered it with her own as she turned to him.

  “This is Miss Voyager,” Elizabeth said. “She is a friend of Curiosity’s.”

  The young woman curtsied, stifling a cough in her fist.

  “Glad to make your acquaintance.” Nathaniel’s tone was easy, but his expression was equal parts concern and interest.

  Hannah said, “We came up the west way, Da. She’s chilled through and I want to get her inside.”

  “Better see to it, then.” He was looking hard at Hannah, reading what she had not said from the set of her shoulders and her guarded expression. “We’ll follow directly.”

  Selah Voyager drew herself up to her full height. “Mr. Bonner sir, I am grateful for your h
elp.”

  Nathaniel managed a smile. “Don’t know that I’ve been any help to you, but you’re welcome on Hidden Wolf.”

  Hannah put out her arms, pointing with her chin to Elizabeth’s bundle. When she had taken it and walked on with Selah, Nathaniel pulled his wife closer to examine her face.

  “Another stillbirth?”

  She nodded, leaning into him.

  “I feared as much when you were so long. Kitty’s out of danger?”

  “Curiosity thinks she will survive, but the child was too small. We said we would bury her next to the others, and then on the way home—” Her voice went suddenly hoarse.

  Nathaniel took her by the arm. “You’re so tired your knees are wobbling. You can tell me what there is to tell sitting down as well as standing.”

  The high valley was an oddity, a triangle cut into the side of the mountain at sharp angles. At its far end a waterfall dropped into a narrow gorge; at the widest point two L-shaped cabins stood among blue spruce and birch trees. Three generations of Bonner’s lived in the east cabin, nearest the falls, and in the other, slightly to the west, lived some of Nathaniel Bonner’s Mohawk relatives by his first marriage.

  Nathaniel and Elizabeth came out of the woods into the cornfield on the outer apron of the glen. The smell of the earth waking to the spring sun was strong in the air; the stubble of last year’s corn crunched underfoot. At the edge of the field a single stunted pine tree had fought its way up through a spill of boulders. Nathaniel sat there and pulled Elizabeth down to sit in the vee of his legs, the back of her head resting on his shoulder and his arms around her waist. Her hair smelled of lavender and chalk and ink, of the tallow candles that had burned all night in a birthing room crowded and tense enough to make her sweat. That was one story she did not have to tell: he had heard others like it too often.

  The sound of the waterfall and the children’s voices echoed against the cliffs, coming to them in fits and starts: Lily and Kateri scolding, and the boys’ laughter in response. Elizabeth was content to be quiet and let him talk, so he told her what had passed while she was in the village, about Hawkeye and Runs-from-Bears going out to walk the trap lines and the fox Blue-Jay killed with his sling shot when it came after the hens. Matilda Kaes had stopped by with five yards of linen, in lieu of cash payment for her grandson’s tuition at Elizabeth’s school, and Daniel and Blue-Jay had brought a world of trouble upon themselves by eating a pan of stolen cornbread soaked with maple syrup from the last tapping. Nathaniel wondered to himself why, if the boys had made up their minds to eat themselves sick, they hadn’t let their sisters in on it, an oversight which had sent Lily and Kateri straight to Many-Doves to report the larceny.

  Elizabeth laughed a little at that picture.

  Nathaniel said, “You make a man work mighty hard for a smile, Boots.”

  She twisted in his arms so that he could see that she was capable of smiling, or trying to. They had lost many things in the last year that could not be replaced, and Elizabeth’s easy smile was not the least of them. Her sorrow was as clear as the gray of her eyes.

  In August a putrid sore throat had come down on the village out of nowhere. Richard Todd and Curiosity had known straight off what they were dealing with, but it took some weeks before the rest of them came to understand. Even after Hannah read them an extract from one of her books, there was no way to really take in the nature of the beast she called malignant quinsy—not until he saw it in the throat of his youngest son.

  Hannah made him look, and to this day he wished he had refused. He would no more be able to forget the membrane growing in the soft tissues of the throat than he could forget the boy it had choked to death. Nathaniel thought of the disease as a living thing, a stranger come among them to steal, quick and cruel and unstoppable.

  When it was done, not one family had escaped. At Lake in the Clouds they had buried two of their own: Hannah’s grandmother Falling-Day, and cradled against her chest for safekeeping, Robbie Bonner, just two years old. Nathaniel still expected to hear the boy’s voice whenever he opened his front door.

  She said, “Kitty’s little girl never even took a breath, Nathaniel. At least we had Robbie for a short while.”

  “Too short,” he said, sounding angry, because he was and always would be. Angry at himself, for letting the boy slip away. The truth was, Nathaniel could not make Elizabeth put down her grief any more than he could put aside his own.

  Down in the village the church bell began to toll. Elizabeth started, and sat up straight.

  Nathaniel said, “Of all the things that Lucy Kuick brought to Paradise when she bought the mill from John Glove, that damn bell is by far the most aggravating.”

  “It was Mr. Gathercole who brought the bell,” Elizabeth reminded him, yawning.

  “And who sent for Gathercole?”

  “Mrs. Kuick, yes. I see your point. But it was time, Nathaniel. It is a full two years since Mr. Witherspoon moved to Boston, and people are glad to have a minister.”

  “Not me. Not one with a bell, anyway.”

  That got a smile, at least. She ran a hand over his cheek. “Are you going to complain about this every Sunday for the rest of your life?”

  “If that bell is all there is to worry about then I’m a fortunate man, Boots. Are you going to tell me about that young woman, or not?”

  She inhaled sharply and let it go again, resigned. “She’s a runaway, I think.”

  “I figured that much just by looking at her,” Nathaniel said. “What else do you know?”

  Elizabeth recited the story in her calmest voice, and only the way she worked the fabric of her skirt between her fingers gave away her concern.

  “She has a bijou.”

  “A bijou?”

  She nodded. “An African bijou, like the one Joe had when we found him in the bush.”

  “Not the same one.”

  “No, but it is similar in design. She showed it as if she thought we’d recognize it. I believe Almanzo must use it as a password of sorts, to let Curiosity know that the person before her was sent by him.”

  Nathaniel rubbed a hand over his face, trying to order these ideas in his head. “You’re guessing that they’ve been running escaped slaves up here for a while, but that don’t make much sense, Boots. You know as well as I do that a stranger can’t keep hid in Paradise, especially not one with black skin. You think Curiosity’s putting them up at the old homestead?”

  “That’s not very likely,” she conceded. Her father’s home stood empty since his death, but it was far from abandoned. “People come and go there so often, I can hardly imagine it would be a suitable safe haven.”

  “Something’s going on, that’s for certain. I just hope Galileo and Curiosity ain’t got mixed up with escaped slaves.”

  “Nathaniel—” she said tersely, but he squeezed her shoulder hard to stop what was coming.

  “You don’t need to lecture me about slavery. I don’t like it any more than you do, and you know that well enough. But this might mean a lot of trouble coming our way. What do you think Curiosity was going to do with that girl after she met her at the old homestead?”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said shortly. “But Hannah does.”

  “By Christ, I hope you’re wrong,” Nathaniel said, pulling her closer to him, feeling her weariness and agitation at odds with one another. “But we better go find out.”

  Wrapped in her muslin shroud, Kitty Todd’s stillborn daughter was so small that Hannah could hold her in one palm and feel the shape of her skull, the curve of her spine, the legs tucked up against the chest no wider than a man’s thumb.

  Kitty had rallied enough just before dawn to deliver her, feet first, into Curiosity’s strong hands. The child, far too early and small even for that, could not be persuaded to take a single breath: gone before her mother ever held her, or saw the color of her eyes.

  Kitty would not be strong enough to come up the mountain for the burial, but others might. If Ri
chard Todd got home in time—if he didn’t drink himself into a stupor out of anger and grief—he would bring Ethan to watch while his half sister was laid to rest tucked between the graves of Hannah’s grandmothers: Cora Bonner, who had come from Scotland to make a life for herself on the New-York frontier, and Falling-Day, once clan mother of the Wolf longhouse at Trees-Standing-in-Water. No doubt someone would read something from the bible over his daughter’s grave, but for now she was Hannah’s responsibility.

  She laid the child into a basket and covered her with a blanket, singing a Kahnyen’kehàka death song under her breath. One part of her, the part that was endlessly curious about O’seronni science and medicine, asked why she was taking the time to sing to a dead child when a sick woman waited. The other part of her, far more patient, took comfort in sending the little girl on to the next world with that simple melody in her ear.

  When she returned to Selah Voyager, she found that the journey had taken a heavy toll, filled her lungs so that they rattled with every breath. She was quiet while Hannah examined her, out of fear or weariness or relief or all three. Or maybe she had no questions, maybe she preferred to know nothing of Paradise, thinking it just another stop on the journey. Headed for a safer place, and that not far off now. Hannah could offer that comfort, tell her how close she was, but she hesitated to share knowledge she was not supposed to have at all.

  For her part, Hannah was curious. She wanted to ask about the city, how she had met Manny Freeman, what kind of life she had left behind, if she had walked the whole way, and how much she knew about the place where she was going. But she could wait; she would put aside her questions while she attended to her patient’s needs. Patience was the hardest lesson, but she had had good teachers in her grandmothers.

  On both sides Hannah was descended from healers. It was what she was born to, the only thing that really interested her. She had had good training from the women around her. One white grandmother, one Indian, and Curiosity Freeman. O’seronni medicine and Kahnyen’kehàka, each with strengths and weaknesses; then Elizabeth came to Paradise and brought Cowper’s The Anatomy of Human Bodies with Figures Drawn After Life and Thacher’s American New Dispensatory, books that raised more questions than they answered. Finally she had studied for a few months with Hakim Ibrahim, a ship’s surgeon who had showed her another kind of truth in the small oval lens of a microscope and more books, these ones ancient, with sinuous, musical names: Ibn Sina’s Al-Qanun fi’l-Tibb.