Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  Elizabeth’s mind raced but she could think of nothing but Liam standing in the damp shadows in Axel Metzler’s tavern and the anger etched deep into the bones of his face when he spoke of his brother. If he had wanted a way to revenge himself upon Nathaniel he would find one here, on this deck.

  Nathaniel pulled her closer and spoke so low that she could barely make him out. “I don’t think he’s seen us yet. The angle’s wrong. Come.”

  She followed him wordlessly until they stood near the far rail with the voyagers. It was a singular talent Nathaniel had, this ability to move through the world in the worst of circumstances as if he were simply walking across his own porch on a bright day. A talent that Elizabeth would have paid a high price to possess, especially right at this moment. She forced herself to take three deep breaths.

  No escape. Nowhere to run. No weapons but their wits. She choked down a hysterical sound, more laugh than scream.

  “Ahoy!” Captain Mudge called out to the approaching bateau. He stood at the rail with his hands crossed at his back and his beard fluttering in the breeze like a tattered flag, the very picture of an old sea captain at home on these waters. He seemed not at all worried by the customs officers or the canoes or anything else, but then he could not recognize Liam; he did not realize the trouble within reach.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Hold steady.”

  A swelling anger swept away her fear. Anger at Liam Kirby, at Nathaniel, at herself most of all. She could not help but look over the faces that had grown so familiar to her already, these people who had withstood so much; she had brought them to this. They should have listened to Jode, who stood at the rail with Selah to one side and Splitting-Moon at the other. The simple strength of their combined concern for him kept the boy there as securely as a child on a tether.

  The bateau reached the Washington with a bump and the customs officer came up the rope ladder, small and sharp with bright, darting dark eyes that fixed on the captain. With a great cry he clasped one of Mudge’s hands in both his own and shook it fiercely.

  “Jed Allen,” said Nathaniel.

  “Another Allen?”

  He shrugged, a muscle in his cheek fluttering softly. “You can’t spit on this lake without hitting one of the Allen kin.”

  Elizabeth tried to clear her thoughts. Was this good news, or bad? She said, “Will he recognize you?”

  “I doubt it. Haven’t seen him in twenty years or more.”

  The captain and his cousin were exchanging news, but Elizabeth could not concentrate on anything but that spot where Liam Kirby would first show his face. He would come on board and point them out for imposters and criminals; he would take not only Selah and her child, but all of them. Every one. In her stomach fear roiled like the sea itself, hot and brackish.

  Jed Allen turned and leaned over the rail to shout down at the bateau. “Mr. Thistlewaite! I need you here!”

  “The clerk,” Nathaniel whispered at her ear. He had stepped back so that he could speak to her and watch what was happening at the same time. “If Kirby does come on board, there’s a chance he won’t give us away, with you here. Just a chance he won’t want to see you go to gaol.”

  “Selah.” She hissed the name. “Where can she hide?” Even as she said the words she knew the answer: nowhere. The deck was open to examination; to reach the false bulkhead where the weapons were hid, Selah would have to cross the length of the ship. It would be like waving a flag.

  “Here’s the clerk, now. Keep a calm face and don’t turn around.”

  The clerk was an elderly man, but he came on board as nimbly as a boy and landed with a soft thump. He carried a great register book in a sling across his chest and a lead pencil stuck in the corner of his mouth like a pipe, but most important was the fact that Mr. Thistlewaite was dressed much as they were, in simple gray, and his hair was cut in a straight line across his forehead. A Quaker, then. Surely there was some good sign to be read in that fact.

  “Mr. Thistlewaite!” Jed Allen shouted. “Are you ready?” The old man fumbled the great register open across a barrel, took the pencil from his mouth, and nodded.

  “I am ready, yes indeed.”

  “Make record of the cargo!” Mr. Allen’s voice was all thunder and bark now that he had taken up his business, but his cousin the captain seemed not in the least intimidated. He ran his fingers through his beard and glanced down over the rail at the men who had still not come on board. He’s looking at Liam, Elizabeth thought. But he doesn’t know that.

  “A dozen keg of nails, three dozen barrels of potash,” recited Captain Mudge. “But there’s no need to write that down, man, it’s none of it bound for Canada and I won’t be paying tax on what stays in New-York State. It’s passengers we’re transporting, as you can see. Quaker missionaries.”

  Both men turned to look at them, Mr. Thistlewaite squinting through his spectacles and Mr. Allen craning his head forward in a motion like a chicken swallowing.

  “Quakers, by God.” Mr. Allen seemed to take them in for the first time. “Where did you dig up Quaker missionaries, Grievous? And black ones, on top of that?”

  “Bound to preach to the Mohawk,” said the captain, ignoring the question that had been asked. “They’ve got their work cut out for ’em.”

  “The Mohawk, is that so. Mr. Thistlewaite, did you hear that?”

  “I did, yes indeed.”

  “And what do you think of such a thing?”

  The older man blinked in surprise. “Why, not much at all, no indeed. God’s work, so it is.” The bateau bumped against the Washington again and Mr. Thistlewaite glanced down toward the water. When he raised his head again he met Elizabeth’s gaze and held it for just a moment too long.

  Mr. Allen swung back to the captain. “You’ve seen their papers, have you, Grievous?”

  “I have,” said the captain very solemnly. “They look to be in order.”

  “That’s good enough for me. Is it good enough for you, Mr. Thistlewaite, or do you want to make a record in your book?”

  Elizabeth pressed her handkerchief to her mouth while she watched the old man struggle with the question. Behind the lenses of his spectacles his eyes seemed overlarge, more than human, owllike, seeing things left in the shadows and dark places. A servant of two masters, his own conscience and the job he had been entrusted to carry out. Elizabeth saw all that on his face but there was more as he looked over the faces of the voyagers. Pity, and resignation.

  “No, sir, no indeed,” he said finally. “But there’s the matter of Mr. Cobb and his associate waiting, sir. He’ll want to have a look, so he will.”

  Mr. Cobb. Elizabeth must have made some sound in her throat because Nathaniel had taken her arm again and his grip was hard.

  There’s a blackbirder in the city, name of Cobb … Don’t speak of the devil no more, he might just appear.

  “Damn the blackbirders!” barked Mr. Allen. “They’ve boarded every ship to come through here for the last week and found not a single runaway for the trouble. This is Captain Grievous Mudge, Mr. Thistlewaite. If Grievous Mudge has seen the papers and is satisfied then so must Mr. Cobb be satisfied.”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Mr. Thistlewaite. “But he’s coming on board all the same and Mr. Kirby with him.”

  A sudden calm came over Elizabeth, as if she were a vessel filled to the brim with fear and could simply take no more. Then she realized Nathaniel was turning away, toward hushed voices and the rattle of metal. She turned too, and there was Splitting-Moon with Selah’s child in her arms.

  Selah herself stood at the rail, holding a twenty-pound keg of nails wrapped in a tangle of rope, some of it looped around her arms and neck. There was nothing of fright in her expression, nothing but resolution. She was four strides away; she was already gone. She met Elizabeth’s gaze and mouthed a single word.

  Curiosity.

  With her arms wrapped around the keg Selah rolled over the rail as silently and gracefully as
a bird launching itself from a cliff and disappeared into the great lake, just as the blackbirders stepped on board the Washington.

  Elizabeth swooned. When she came to herself again moments later she was still on her feet, suspended between Nathaniel and Jode, two strong men shuddering with a rage they dared not vent. All around her the faces of the voyagers were blank with a stunned fear. And Selah was not among them; Selah was gone.

  Elizabeth heard a whimpering coming from her own throat. Nathaniel’s arm tightened across her back. Senseless noise coming from his mouth in a low whisper, the same sounds over and over until they began to make sense. Meant not just for her but for Jode too, a low chant in Kahnyen’kehàka.

  “She sacrificed herself for the boy. Think of the boy, now. Think of the boy.”

  Curiosity’s grandson. Behind them he was fussing, a small hiccuping cry. Elizabeth freed herself with a jerk and turned. Splitting-Moon was rocking the baby against her chest, humming to him. His mother’s death song.

  Elizabeth took the child without a word and his weight, the solid fact of him, brought her back to herself and anchored her among the living. She paced her breathing to this child she had helped into the world; a child she would have to deliver now to his grandmother.

  She forced herself to raise her head and consider the men who were here to stop her.

  The unremarkable Mr. Cobb stood almost directly in front of her, his head bent over the papers she had forged so carefully. There was nothing of the mad dog about him; he looked to her more like a traveler long on the road, ill-tempered and overwrought. Liam held himself apart, standing as far away from them as he could, his arms crossed on his chest and his expression unreadable. Selah had chosen her own kind of flight from these two, but the others could not; her son could not.

  She sought out Liam’s gaze, and held it. Watched his expression shift from righteous knowing to uncertainty, from uncertainty to anger, from anger to discomfort. He looked away once when Mr. Thistlewaite spoke to him and then back again, hesitantly, like a child drawn to the fire he has been warned about.

  The boy in her arms whimpered and Elizabeth gave him her little finger to suckle, but she did not give up Liam’s gaze. If he had it in his heart to betray them, he would do it looking at her; he would do it knowing what he wrought.

  Cobb was asking questions. Nathaniel answered in the calmest and most reasonable of tones; as if the world were a sane and reasonable place. He recited, word for word, the answers they had practiced together while Elizabeth held Liam’s gaze. While Cobb called out the names and matched them to the faces who claimed them, she held Liam’s gaze.

  There was another long silence while Cobb studied the papers with the air of a schoolboy confounded by a calculation. A crease appeared between his brows.

  “There are twelve blacks listed here, but I see only eleven. One of the wenches is missing.”

  “Dead in childbirth,” said Nathaniel. Speaking one part of the truth. Elizabeth shuddered to hear it.

  Cobb’s gaze rested for a moment on the child in Elizabeth’s arms. He grunted. “And what about that red nigger back there? I don’t see any mention of her here.”

  A muscle fluttered in Nathaniel’s cheek, the worst of signs, but the man before him could not know that. He said, “She is Mohawk. She has never been a slave.”

  Cobb’s thin mouth turned down and seemed to disappear into his face. “That’s what’s wrong with the whole damn country. A red nigger Quaker.” He shook his head in disgust and then a sly look came over him. He glanced toward Liam over his shoulder.

  “A Mohawk woman here, Kirby,” he shouted. “Maybe you want to have a taste, seeing how you’re still looking for the one that run off from you.” Cobb snorted a laugh, the tip of his tongue thrust out between his teeth.

  Elizabeth felt Nathaniel jerk in surprise and then struggle to calm himself, even as she watched Liam first flush to the roots of his hair and then go pale with the fury of a patient man. She caught his eye and he went very still and in that moment she knew that they were saved. Somewhere a Mohawk woman—not Hannah, surely he could not be talking about Hannah—was unaware that she had saved a handful of people standing on this ship. Cobb had saved them by summoning her image to stand here. The Mohawk woman who was not Hannah, unnamed, unknown, had finished the job that Selah had begun.

  With one last look at Elizabeth, Liam turned away and said a few words to the captain, and then he left the Washington, disappearing down the ladder rope.

  In her relief, Elizabeth clutched the boy to her so fiercely that he wailed. Cobb pivoted toward the sound, still laughing. He pulled a piece of paper from his jerkin and held it up. A poster, much folded and water stained.

  “It’s this woman I’m after.” He circled with it held high, raised his voice toward the crew. “Any sign of this runaway wench?”

  His circle brought him back around to Elizabeth and Nathaniel, and he stepped closer with his poster, held it up to their faces. “You haven’t seen this black? None of your Quaker friends got her hid in a cellar somewhere?”

  It was a crude piece of work, poorly printed on rough paper. Five hundred dollars reward for the capture of the runaway slave and murderess called Ruth. A rough drawing of a young woman with a bloody knife in an upraised fist. Wild-eyed, treacherous, unknowable.

  Just this morning Selah had laughed with the rest of them at Pico’s stories. When most mothers would have run in fear at Charlie’s outburst, she had smiled kindly and asked him to hold her son. Selah, at the bottom of the lake with a keg of nails cradled in her arms.

  Cobb stood watching her, his expression eager and curious and twitching with want. His stink lay about him like a shadow, full and ripe, so that the knotted fist deep in Elizabeth’s belly suddenly punched upward without warning. She bent forward with the force of it, her body curled over the child as she spewed bile across the deck, spattering Cobb from foot to waist. He let out a cry of disgust and jumped back, swatting at himself.

  Someone took the child, and Nathaniel held her shoulders while she retched. When Elizabeth finally raised her head, Cobb was gone.

  Late that night, as the Washington sat anchored in Canadian waters, the longboat took the voyagers to the spot where Stone-Bird had promised Captain Mudge he would wait for them. Splitting-Moon sat in the bow between two oarsmen in a circle of light from a lantern that swayed overhead on a pole. With every stroke of the oars the light played out to gild the rippling water.

  Standing on the deck of the Washington, Elizabeth watched as the boat slowed and then stopped. One by one, the voyagers slipped into the lake to wade to shore in darkness. Jode had already reclaimed his buckskins and leggings and weapons; in the night he might have been any Kahnyen’kehàka hunter. The women trailed behind with skirts kittled up, their arms wrapped around each other. Elizabeth could not see them once they were away from the boat, but she could hear them weeping for relief and sorrow.

  Beside them, Captain Mudge said, “They’ll be safe now. Stone-Bird will see them to Good Pasture, you can be sure of that.”

  Nathaniel answered him, empty talk of weather and trails and distances to be covered; Elizabeth turned her face away. Let the captain believe her to be overcome with grief and anxiety, if only to hide those feelings she found so distasteful in herself: she was faint with relief to see the last of the voyagers. Let Stone-Bird deal with them, with Stephan’s fever and Charlie’s weeping and the women’s bent backs. They were no longer her concern; she would put them out of her mind and heart and conscience, and turn all her attention to the boy.

  The longboat had already begun to make its way back to the ship, the rhythm of the oars cutting water as steady as a heartbeat. Within the hour the captain would give the order and the Washington would turn about and sail south, toward home. Where her own children waited; where Selah’s son would find a home with his father’s people.

  Nathaniel’s breath on her hair, warm and slightly sweet. She raised her eyes to him, saw the
way the lantern light etched the lines on his face and made his expression more severe. The downward turn of his mouth, the resolute set of his jaw when he looked at the sleeping child in her arms.

  “Take us home.” She was surprised to hear herself say the words aloud, but Nathaniel was not. He laid a hand against her cheek, and nodded.

  NEW-YORK CITY

  APRIL 19, 1802

  Midday. Fort Hunter.

  Left Paradise at first light. Threatening rain clouds to the west for most of the day, but the roads remained dry. Flies a plague to horses and people alike. Hooded mergansers on the rail of the ferry when we crossed the Mohawk, a good sign. The river very high but the crossing uneventful.

  Kitty claims not to be in pain but she willingly took willow bark at midday and again in the late afternoon without her usual complaints.

  In Johnstown we saw a young boy selling newspapers, large of head and with a normal trunk but his limbs only half their expected length. He stared at me quite openly. I expect he had never seen a Kahnyen’kehàka woman dressed as I am for this journey, as I had never seen one of his kind.

  I will be glad when it is behind us.

  Chapter 18

  Kitty Witherspoon Middleton Todd was, as Hannah had known she would be, a difficult patient and a worse traveler. Frail and fractious, she was capable of manufacturing indignities and pains to complement the real ones that were part of any long journey. And she was exactly the distraction that Hannah needed. During the day, at least, Kitty allowed her no time to think of Liam Kirby and the things they had said to each other; there was little opportunity to worry about her father and Elizabeth on their way into the bush with Selah, Manny Freeman, or what waited for her at the Kine-Pox Institution.

  Kitty was one kind of distraction, but there was Ethan as well. Hannah had anticipated that Kitty’s son might need as much of her attention as his mother. He was a good and biddable child, but any nine-year-old boy would have to be kept amused and out of danger during river crossings and in the city crowds. By the end of the first day, Hannah realized that she had underestimated Ethan, who turned out to be the very best kind of partner in the undertaking before them.