Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  Selah’s eyes closed and opened again. “The missus, she made old Vaark take my Violet away just as soon as she was weaned. Said she cry too much and keep me from my work. I asked would they sell me too, sell us together, but the master just got to looking sorrowful. He say, ain’t you happy here? Don’t we treat you good? Like it was an insult to him, me wanting to be with my baby.

  “Then she was gone. They never would tell me where to, no matter how I thought to ask. Took me down just as low as a woman can go.

  “So the master, he finally come upon the idea of sending me to the African Free School two evenings a week. He got it in his head that it might raise up my spirits if I was to learn to read. The missus didn’t like the idea of me spending time with free blacks. Said it would put ideas into my head. But she didn’t like me crying all the time neither so she say, go on then, as long as you get your work done.

  “And it did stop me crying, but not for the reason they was thinking. You see, there’s so many blacks coming and going in the Free School, I thought for sure I’d find somebody who could tell me about Violet, who had bought her and where she was in the city.”

  There was the flicker of anger across her face, banished as quickly as it had come.

  “And did you find out?”

  “Oh, I found out sure enough, but not the way I thought. The answer was right under my nose the whole time, but I couldn’t make sense of it till I learned to read. Don’t think it ever occurred to old Vaark that a slave who can read the bible can read anything else that come her way. One day when I was sweeping out the little room where he keep all his paperwork I come across a piece of paper with my baby’s name on it.”

  She closed her eyes and recited from memory:

  To the honorable Mr. Richard Furman, Superintendent & Commissioner of the Almshouse in this City of New-York. Gentlemen I hereby inform you that my Negro wench Ruth was brought to bed the fifth day of July 1799 with a female child called Connie. I do therefore hereby give you notice that I do abandon all my right & title and all responsibility for the care of said female child in accordance with the Gradual Manumission Act signed into law by the Legislature and do hereby pass the child into the care of this City. This Certificate of Abandonment made & provided by my own hand the 6th day of June 1801. Albert Vaark, Merchant, Pearl Street

  “Except I couldn’t read so good yet when I found it. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe the words on the paper. So I stole it, just put it in my apron and that night when I went to the school I asked the first person I come across would he please read it to me, just to be sure. That’s how I met Manny.

  “He read it to me twice, and every time it was like a fire in me, burning and burning until there wasn’t nothing left of my heart but a cinder.”

  “But why?” Elizabeth asked. She could not make sense of what she had heard. “Why would they do such a thing?”

  Selah’s mouth contorted, as if the things she had to say were sour on the tongue.

  “The Gradual Manumission Act say, once Violet get to be twenty-five years of age she could walk away, free. Vaark didn’t like the idea of bringing up a child and feeding her twenty-five years and then letting her go with no profit to show. The law say, he don’t have to keep her if he don’t want the trouble.”

  “So when they told you that they sold her—”

  “That was all a lie. I knowed it anyway. I knowed down in my bones once I stopped crying long enough to think it through. Wasn’t no tears left inside me, you see, just enough hate to burn down the world. All that fire inside me made a bright light to see by. Who going to buy a black baby who cain’t do no work? They sent her to the poorhouse.”

  Selah rocked back and forth slowly. “So that morning the mistress sent me down to fetch buttermilk, I just kept walking. Walked all the way up to Chambers Street where the poor-house stand, and I walked right in and I ask, can I see my child.

  “But they turned me away. Woman there said, a slave woman ain’t got no business nosing around the poorhouse, and did my master know where I was? Nine hundred people they got in those three stories, and was I thinking of looking at every one of them?

  “I was just as desperate as a woman can be about that time,but Manny helped me through it. He come looking for me, you see. Come right to the kitchen door looking for me and I went out to talk to him. That’s when he told me about the Lost Children. He say it just like that, ‘Lost Children,’ like other folks might say ‘Trinity Church’ or ‘Pearl Street.’ So we sat down out back and he tolt me about all the little black babies put out since the Manumission Act come into law. Some in the poorhouse, but others just put out to make they own way. Black children like wild dogs, living off the street. But my Violet, she was in the poorhouse. It didn’t seem so bad no more when Manny said it like that. He come along and give me hope again.”

  Elizabeth said, “I had been wondering how you met.”

  Selah nodded. “It was my Violet brought us together. I never asked him, but the next day he started looking for her. I couldn’t just wander around the city, you understand, but Manny was born free and a free nigger can go where he want, so long as he stay out of trouble and don’t call attention to his-self Manny could get into the poorhouse now and then, look around for a while, ask some questions.

  “There wasn’t nothing I could do but wait. Couldn’t even let on that I knowed what the master done.

  “All that summer Manny kept looking for Violet. We was seeing each other every day by that time. He’d come by Pearl Street or he’d wait for me in the market on the days I wasn’t going to school in the evening. And every time he’d have something to tell me. He say, I talked to Dr. Post yesterday when he was coming out of the dispensary. No word yet. He always say it like that, no word yet.

  “Now by that time Manny had already got it in his head to set me on the path north. But it just didn’t set right, the idea of running off not knowing was my Violet alive or dead. Didn’t much care to go without Manny, neither. We was as good as man and wife by that time, you understand. But then I come up pregnant, and I didn’t have no choice.”

  She put her hands on her belly, looked down at it as if it could talk to her.

  “Truth is, I don’t know who got this child on me. I like to think it was Manny. We was together enough last summer that it could well be. But the master, he never would leave me alone. He was one of them menfolk cain’t rest till his itch good and scratched. Didn’t matter was I big with child or in my courses or how early in the evening the missus locked us in the cellar. There wasn’t no lock in this world that would stop old Vaark when the urge came on him.”

  Elizabeth had to swallow hard to control the nausea that rose in her throat, but Selah didn’t seem to notice. The momentum of the story was carrying her forward, and Elizabeth had the uneasy feeling that the worst was yet to come.

  “Manny say, it don’t make no difference one way or the other, he going to claim this child as his own. So he set me on the path. But then old Vaark, he come after me.”

  A look came over her, not of regret or remorse or even sorrow, but a kind of resignation.

  “Just at first light it was when I come around that corner and saw him. And what I thought was, the only way I was going back to the city was by jumping in that river and letting it take me down. I was ready to do it too, but Vaark, he got between me and the water and he caught me by the arm and wouldn’t let go.

  “Now you got to understand, he wasn’t mad. Never did see him mad. He just get that sorrowful face and say, what a disappointment I was to him, and what was I thinking, running off from a master who treat me so good. Didn’t he send me to school, and see to it that I learned to read? And didn’t I always have a full belly?”

  The corner of Selah’s mouth jerked hard. “That’s when I put the knife in his throat. Seemed like the only way to keep the man from talking. I know how strange that sound, but it went through my head just like that. He keeled right over and fell into the river, didn�
��t even make much noise. But the river wouldn’t take him. Kept him right there. I just stood and watched the way he kept bumping up against the dock, like he was knocking at a door.

  “Couldn’t have been more than a minute or two afore I came to myself and knew I had two choices: I could jump into the river, too, and put an end to it, or I could try to save myself and the child. So I hid away in the first boat I come across and waited, for somebody to come sail away or for a mob to find me and string me up on the nearest tree.

  “But the Lord saw fit to lift the yoke. The captain come along not much later, him and three sailors. All of them so drunk they couldn’t hardly walk straight. He look me right in the eye and he say, fare to Albany’s ten dollars. You got ten dollars, girl? Which I did, Manny gave it to me and I had it sewn into my skirt. Just as soon as I handed it over he sent one of them sailors to buy a keg of ale and after that they didn’t pay me no mind at all. I just sat quiet and watched the river, thinking about the look on old Vaark’s face when I put the knife in him.

  “Sometime when the night real quiet, I can almost hear the missus saying how I’ma burn in everlasting hellfire for what I done. What I ain’t tolt you yet is, she don’t have children of her own. The master got children on every slave who come into the house, but not a single one on his own wife, married in front of a preacher and all. Sometimes when I get to thinking about it, I wonder if deep down the missus ain’t glad that I put that knife to use.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I imagine that you may be right about that.”

  Selah rubbed both hands over her belly thoughtfully. “I’d do it all over again, that’s the pure truth. Hellfire couldn’t hurt me no worse than I hurt that morning he took my Violet away. Now.” She shook her head. “I bothered you long enough with my troubles, Miz Elizabeth, but it just didn’t seem right, all this worry you took upon yourself on my account, and you not knowing. Seem to me that it was only right to tell you what I done. If you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to pass what I said along to your husband. Don’t know as I could tell it again anytime soon.”

  “Of course,” Elizabeth said. “Of course, if you want me to.”

  “I do. Now I’ma get a drink from that little stream we passed.” And she got to her feet, rising up gracefully in spite of her bulk, and went off without another word.

  Chapter 13

  “It is exactly as I remember it.” Elizabeth sat down abruptly on the outcropping of boulders where they had stopped on the shore of Little Lost. “Nothing has changed at all.”

  “Nothing much changes in the bush,” agreed Nathaniel. He hunkered down beside her, but turned to speak to Selah.

  “Why don’t you put down that pack and sit for a while? No more than a quarter hour to Robbie’s place from here, so there’s no hurry.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Selah. “It would be a shame to walk on from this place without taking time to look. Just about every day now I think to myself it couldn’t get much prettier, but it does. Cain’t hardly believe it’s real.”

  “Oh, it’s real,” said Nathaniel. “Elizabeth learned to swim right in this lake, she can tell you. That was later in the season, of course. Now the water’s cold enough to freeze a man’s—”

  “Nathaniel,” Elizabeth said. Selah had covered her mouth with one hand, and looked away politely.

  “What is it, Boots?” He grinned broadly.

  “Do you think perhaps you should go ahead to make sure that the caves are—”

  “Still there? Don’t believe there’s much chance that they up and walked away. Do you?”

  “—not occupied,” finished Elizabeth, poking him gently in the arm. “I don’t like the idea of sharing my bed with a bear or a polecat, and I for one would like to get settled as soon as possible.”

  It was their fourth day in the bush. Elizabeth’s energy had begun to flag, and while she did not like to admit it, she would be more than content to stay in one place until Splitting-Moon came to find them. Looking over Little Lost it occurred to her that there was more to her weariness than sore muscles: she was looking forward to spending time here with Nathaniel, free of children and daily routines. And in spite of the seriousness of the situation, there was good reason to think that the worst was behind them: Nathaniel had not been able to find any evidence that they were being tracked by Liam Kirby or Ambrose Dye, food was plentiful, and now that they had had some time with Selah, she seemed to be comfortable with them.

  Then Nathaniel put a loaded musket next to Elizabeth, and her good thoughts tumbled in on themselves.

  “Is that necessary?”

  His expression told her that it was. He said, “I’ll be back in a half hour. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I take it you are going to remind me of every false step I ever took in the bush,” she countered. But her grumbling was lost on him; he had already started on the path that wound its way up the mountainside.

  Selah had found a sunny spot on a boulder where she could dangle her feet, and stripped off her moccasins to take advantage of the water. Elizabeth joined her, sucking in her breath at the cold.

  “I had been thinking of a swim,” she confessed. “But I see that Nathaniel is right. Very irritating of him to be right so often.”

  Selah smiled, her gaze moving over the lake. It was no more than a half-mile long, irregular in shape and shallow enough along the shore to count darting minnows. On the other side of the lake the high bank was lined with balsam and red spruce, and the forest seemed as dark and impenetrable as a dungeon.

  “Do you suppose there’s a lake where I’m going?”

  “The endless forests are full of lakes,” said Elizabeth. “And swamps and marshes, too, not nearly as pleasant. And bogs, which are even worse. This I know from personal experience. You will never have to search very far for water, that I can promise you.”

  For a long moment they were silent while the persistent lilting song of a preacher bird echoed through the woods, countered by the ovenbird’s loud staccato.

  “Tell me about this man used to live here,” said Selah. “Must have been awful lonely.”

  Elizabeth considered. “His name was Robbie MacLachlan. He came here from Scotland as a young man, after a terrible war. When Nathaniel and I were first married, we spent time here with him and he taught me a great deal about surviving in the forests. He did like the solitude, but I think he was often lonely.”

  Selah’s sober expression said that Elizabeth had failed to give her the story she wanted.

  “He was our good friend, the very best of friends. We named our second son for him.” Her voice wobbled and cracked, and for a moment she could do nothing more than study the shape of their feet in the water, milk white and a deep rich brown against the sandy bottom where a scattering of pebbles made the shape of a question mark. The sun disappeared behind cloud and the warmth went out of the day, and then came again, just as unexpectedly.

  She drew in a shaky breath and let it out again. “Robbie loved to read,” she said. “But his eyesight was poor. So we would come down to the lake in the early evening and I would read aloud to him right here on this rock. He would have some kind of work in his hands, carving or mending rope. After I had finished reading he would sing. He had a beautiful voice, and when he sang the birds went quiet in the trees to listen.

  “He died far away across the sea,” she finished. “Where he started.”

  Selah reached out, shyly, and touched Elizabeth’s hand. She said, “Don’t think he’s gone from here, not all of him. I never knew the man, but I can feel him all around. Cain’t you?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth whispered. “I think you’re right.”

  Because Nathaniel needed a good deal more time than he thought he would, he half-expected that Elizabeth would have started up the mountainside to look for him, no matter what instructions he had given her to stay put. Instead he found the two women sitting where he had left them, deep in conversation as dusk settled over the lake.

 
He knew every expression Elizabeth had to offer, and he could see straight off that she had been thinking about Robbie. It was something she never could hide, partly because sorrow had a way of overtaking her when she wasn’t looking for it. Now she gave him a grim smile, the one that meant that she didn’t want to hear any questions, or give any answers. That would come later, when she was ready and not before.

  “Ran into some tracks,” he said. “I followed them a ways.”

  “Splitting-Moon?” Elizabeth asked.

  He nodded. “I think so. We best move now, before it’s dark.”

  They put aside further discussion in favor of a quick pace, Nathaniel following for once while Elizabeth led the way. He had taken enough time to satisfy himself about the tracks, but he was on guard now, all his senses turned outward, listening hard.

  Just as the last of the light was fading they came to Robbie’s home camp, which was nothing more than a small natural clearing, surrounded by stands of birch and maple. When Robbie was alive he had kept the underbrush cut back, but now as far as Elizabeth could see there was the usual tangle of bush and vine and fallen timber. The cook pit was still there, lined with rocks too big to cart away, but the trivet and spit were gone. The stripped logs of the lean-to shone a weathered silver in the dusk. For forty years or more it had stood there leaning into the side of the mountain, empty now save for spiderwebs and the dried-out carcass of a fox that had somehow managed to find a way in, but not out again.

  The lean-to had never been anything but a way to protect and hide the natural opening into the caves. Once that opening had been fitted with a wooden door, but that was long gone, sacrificed to some trapper’s cook fire.

  It must have been Splitting-Moon who had drawn the emblem of the Wolf clan above the opening into the caves in red, to claim this place and protect it too. It was a sign to anyone who knew how to move through the bush that this place had been claimed, and that they would come again.