Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  Hannah watched until she was forced to accept what her eyes and her rational mind told her: the men of the city had taken it upon themselves to seize the sea, to turn water into land, and they were succeeding.

  Standing at the rail with Ethan on one side and Kitty on the other, Hannah could find no words at all for what she was feeling, not so much fright or revulsion or even confusion, but the simple knowledge that she did not belong here, could never belong in a place like this.

  “Isn’t it glorious,” Kitty announced, clasping her hands together hard, as if to contain the urge to throw out her arms in an embrace of all Manhattan. “Have you ever seen a city so alive, Hannah? Have you ever seen anything so exciting?”

  Yes, Hannah wanted to say. I have seen a mad dog snapping at its own tail. But she kept this thought trapped with a tight smile.

  Ethan put a hand on her arm, as if he had heard what she could not bring herself to say: This is no place for me.

  “Look,” he said calmly. “Aunt and Uncle Spencer.”

  “Oh, how good of her,” said Kitty, her face radiant with satisfaction. “Amanda is come to meet us. I can hardly wait—” She stopped in mid-sentence, and both Ethan and Hannah turned to her to see that she had gone very pale.

  “Mother?”

  Kitty looked at Ethan as if he had asked her a puzzling question, and then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted into Hannah’s arms.

  “Your mother was just overcome by excitement. Tomorrow morning she’ll be impatient to go out shopping, Ethan, wait and see.”

  “But she was bleeding,” whispered the boy.

  They were standing in the hall outside Kitty’s room in the Spencers’ fine home on Whitehall Street. Dr. Wallace, Amanda’s personal physician, and the famous Dr. Ehrlich had been summoned even before the Spencers’ carriage had left the wharves, and both men were waiting when they arrived at the house. Kitty, conscious but disoriented, had disappeared into her room with them in close attendance, along with Amanda’s housekeeper, a black woman called Mrs. Douglas.

  “She was bleeding,” Hannah agreed, because she could not deny what they had all seen: Kitty’s skirts spattered with blood. “She was bleeding, as all women bleed, once a month.”

  No doubt Kitty would faint all over again to hear Hannah offer this particular explanation to a young boy. Worse, it was not the entire truth. Healthy women of childbearing age bled, but not like this.

  Ethan’s desperate expression softened a bit. “All women?”

  “Yes,” said Hannah firmly. “All women who are old enough to bear children, for a few days every month. When we are home again you must ask your stepfather, and he’ll explain it to you. But it is a private matter, one not discussed in company.”

  Lily and Daniel both would have argued with Hannah about this. They would want to know why such an interesting fact as monthly bleeding should not be discussed with anyone who could provide an explanation. But Ethan knew his mother, and he understood without being told that to raise this topic with her would bring consequences neither of them wanted to contemplate.

  Downstairs in the foyer a door opened, and Hannah heard Will Spencer speaking to one of the maids. Then Peter’s voice rose up to them, breathless and eager.

  “He’s looking for you,” Hannah said. “You might as well go along, I’ll call you when you can see her. I promise.”

  Ethan hesitated one more moment, and then ran along the wide hall and disappeared down the stairs, leaving Hannah to collapse onto a chair.

  Her head was throbbing and she was trembling, from hunger but also simple exhaustion. Hannah made herself breathe deeply, once and then again, and when she opened her eyes she noticed the painting on the opposite wall for the first time. A pheasant draped across a table as if waiting to be plucked and cleaned; a carved crystal decanter filled with wine the color of blood; a bowl of apples, pears, peaches. A single orange.

  Hannah closed her eyes again and saw before her a wide, flat basket filled with figs, apricots, dates, smooth-shelled nuts. Hakim Ibrahim holding out an orange to her, the first orange she had ever seen. It had looked to her like a small sun caught in the web of his fingers, his skin the color of earth mixed with ash. In her own hand the orange was heavy, dense, smooth to the touch. The Hakim took another and showed her how to open it, thrusting his thumbs into the skin so that the juice showered the room with its scent, light, sweet, and still faintly sharp.

  That morning they had been talking about another woman who lost a child, a Scotswoman, long dead now. A melody came to Hannah unbidden. A song the Scotswoman had sung standing at the rail in a sweet, low voice.

  Be wary o’ the cold damp

  Be wary o’ the mists

  Be wary o’ the nicht air

  Be wary o’ the roads and the bridges and the burns

  Be wary o’ men and women and bairns

  Be wary o’ what ye can see

  And what ye canna

  The Hakim had eyes as dark as her own and a high brow creased in concentration under a neatly folded red turban. He was not like O’seronni doctors she had known; he never hurried, and when he had thought through a problem he presented his reasoning along with his conclusions.

  What had he said about the Scotswoman? She is not yet healed from her loss, either in mind or body.

  “You are very far away in your thoughts, Hannah.”

  It was Will Spencer’s familiar and friendly voice, but she started anyway, jumping up from her chair, catching a hand against her heart as if to calm it.

  “Oh dear,” said Amanda. “We didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  The idea that Amanda Spencer might frighten anybody at all made Hannah smile.

  “I think you must have been dreaming,” said Will.

  “Yes,” said Hannah. “I was. I was dreaming about Hakim Ibrahim. He used sandalwood oil in a case like Kitty’s, to quiet the womb. I had forgotten that until just now.”

  Amanda’s sweet smile faltered a little, and Hannah reminded herself where she was. Amanda Merriweather Spencer, Lady Durbeyfield, had probably never before heard the word womb spoken in mixed company, but she was too well trained a hostess and far too kind to let her dismay show openly.

  Hannah said, “Forgive me, I was thinking out loud.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” said Will Spencer. “We would all be thankful to have the Hakim here for Kitty, isn’t that so, Amanda? We owe him a great debt. Sandalwood oil, you say? I believe it would be possible to locate sandalwood oil here in the city. I will send out some inquiries.”

  Amanda put a small hand on her husband’s arm. “There is time for that tomorrow,” she said firmly. “Right now I am going to show Hannah her room, so that she can collect herself. We dine at four, so you have an hour.”

  Will nodded, a little reluctantly. “Very well, then. Until then.”

  Hannah was sorry to see him go. As a girl she had come to like and admire Will Spencer for his honesty and his interest in her life. In her experience there were few Englishmen who were able or willing to really talk to a young girl; there were fewer who would bother with a half-breed. Will always reminded her of Elizabeth when she first came to Paradise, as open to the world around her as anyone who had been raised among the Kahnyen’kehàka. It was so rare a thing among the O’seronni that at first it had been hard to trust, in both of them.

  Sometimes it seemed to Hannah that Will Spencer and her stepmother Elizabeth might be the same person in two selves, twins born to different mothers. It was something she had discussed at length with her grandmother Falling-Day and her aunt Many-Doves, but never with either Elizabeth or Will. They were too English to understand that such things were possible.

  “Here we are,” said Amanda, opening the door to a room two doors down from Kitty’s. “Ethan is right next to you, you see, in case he calls for you in the night.”

  The room was large and airy and beautifully furnished, exactly what Hannah had expected of the Spencers. While
Amanda spoke of baths and tea and anything else that Hannah might need or want, she saw that her trunk had been brought up and her things put away.

  “I hope you will be comfortable here. We are so glad to have you with us,” Amanda finished.

  The words of a lady raised to run a mansion or a manor, but there was nothing artificial about the way they were said. Hannah knew that it was her turn to say something equally well bred, to compliment her hostess and thank her for her hospitality, but before she could think exactly what might be expected, Amanda surprised her by leaning forward to take her hands.

  She said, “I know this is very strange for you, Hannah. The city must be overwhelming, and I imagine you are thinking of home with great longing. But we are glad to have you here, for as long a visit as you can manage. Please let us do what we may to make your stay a happy one.”

  Hannah opened her mouth to say something, anything, of gratitude. Amanda squeezed her hands again. “Never mind,” she said. “There is nothing that needs to be said. We are family, are we not? You are my own cousin Elizabeth’s beloved stepdaughter and as long as you care to stay with us you must think of this place as your own home.”

  For a long while after Amanda was gone, Hannah sat on the edge of the fine bed, tracing the heavily embroidered motif of flowers and bright birds with one finger. She was comfortable here, she should have said that to Amanda, along with the rest of the truth: I am so comfortable and feel so protected that the idea of leaving this house is overwhelming.

  Just outside the door the city was waiting for her. There were people she must see and talk to and learn from, and things for her to teach in turn. Dr. Simon and his institute, Manny Freeman’s world of runaways and blackbirders, and Liam Kirby’s family.

  The thought of Liam came to Hannah as quickly and suddenly as a brain fever and with it the understanding that she could not pretend to herself that she was not curious. She could not imagine his home, knew nothing about how he lived, had never heard his wife’s name, and she must know all of those things, somehow. When she left this city she would take those answers with her. So she could put Liam Kirby behind her forever.

  Dear Dr. Todd,

  We are safe arrived. The Spencers met us at the dock and brought us away in a carriage. Mrs. Todd was put straight to bed after a faint spell. She is in great good spirits but her pulse is as ever irregular at times and her courses continue unabated. Although she will not own it—she is afraid to be confined to her bed when she has so many plans for this time in the city—I believe her head aches almost constantly. Dr. Ehrlich was waiting for us at the house on Whitehall Street and spent a long time with her. Dr. Wallace was also in attendance. Of Dr. Ehrlich I can say very little except to repeat one of my stepmother’s favorite quotations: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” You will have to hear the doctor’s conclusions (if indeed he has any) from him directly as he will not share them with me.

  Ethan traveled well and is in excellent health and spirits now that he has Peter as a playmate.

  Tomorrow I go to the Kine-Pox Institution for the first time.

  The Spencers send their very best regards as do I, your student

  Hannah Bonner, also called

  Walks-Ahead of the Kahnyen’kehàka

  Chapter 19

  On her first night in the Spencers’ home, Hannah practiced a small rebellion by opening her windows to the night air.

  The maid who closed them to start with was called Suzannah. She had arrived at the door to collect clothing that needed laundering, and stayed to let Hannah know that she was the housekeeper’s granddaughter, seventeen years of age, and that in the fall she was going to marry a cordwainer by the name of Harry Dabbs.

  Hannah had listened politely while Suzannah went about her job of making the room ready for the night, rehanging the gown Hannah had worn to supper, turning down the bed, plumping pillows, positioning the chamber pot, and finally closing all the windows against the night air.

  As soon as she was gone, Hannah had opened all the windows again, and while she did that it occurred to her that in all her eagerness to talk, Suzannah had never asked any questions of Hannah at all. Partly, Hannah was sure, because she already knew a lot; the servants were usually better informed than anyone else in the house. But almost certainly she had not asked Hannah anything because it was part of her training; a servant who asked personal questions—even if she happened to be the housekeeper’s granddaughter—would find herself scrubbing pots and out of the reach of guests. Standing at the windows to breathe in the night air that Suzannah had so feared, Hannah asked herself a question instead.

  Who, in this great and crowded city, could she really talk to?

  She had opened the heavy draperies for good measure, leaving only the lace undercurtains moving uneasily in the breeze. Then she went to bed and lay awake with that one question on her mind.

  The answer, of course, was that there was nobody for her to talk to except the five people in this house who were bound to her by familial ties, responsibility, and common history. Once she walked through the doors into the city, she would be truly alone.

  Hannah woke at sunrise to the disconcerting sound of her name being called. She sat up in the broad bed and pressed her fingers to her eyes, willing her head to clear, listening hard until she could make sense of it.

  “Hannibal!” This was followed by a high giggle. “Watch out now, Hannibal!” A young boy’s voice, but not Ethan or Peter.

  The house was perfectly quiet all around her. Whoever Hannibal might be, somebody was looking for him outside. For a moment Hannah wondered if good manners required her to ignore what was going on in the street under her window, but then curiosity got the better of her.

  She did not bother with the steps that were meant to help her negotiate the long drop to the floor; instead she slid over the side until her bare feet met not cool planks or a knobby rag rug, but a slightly itchy wool carpet.

  Across the street was a small enclosed park called Bowling Green, where they had walked last night after supper while Kitty rested. Hannah had been preoccupied with worry, about Kitty but also about her doctors, who had smiled at her questions with fatherly condescension and never answered at all. She had agreed to the walk because she thought it might clear her head and help her to organize her thoughts, never realizing that to stroll in Bowling Green at dusk was to be on social display.

  Every path had been crowded with fashionable people, some of whom the Spencers had only greeted and others who had been introduced to Hannah, Delafields and Gracies and Varicks without end. The ladies had tried not to stare at the sight of a young Indian woman in lace and silk, but many of the gentlemen, especially those who were old enough to leave social niceties behind them, were less apologetic about their curiosity.

  One stooped old man with a great black cigar plugged into the corner of his mouth and wispy hair that floated around his head like fern fronds had been introduced to her as Mr. Henry. He had puffed hard on his cigar while he studied her with narrowed eyes, and his mouth stretched wide in a delighted smile.

  “So the Mohawk medicine woman is arrived, eh? Dr. Simon told me all about you, girlie. What, no drums and masks?” And he had laughed uproariously at his own wit. Will and Amanda had both been offended for her and apologetic, but Hannah told them the truth: she preferred Mr. Henry’s coarse honesty and open interest to hooded glances and whispered comments.

  At this hour of the morning Bowling Green was all but deserted within its circle of poplar trees just coming into leaf, but the streets were not. The city scavengers were hard at work, collecting rubbish that had been thrown into the street sometime between last night’s walk and now. Three big men with kerchiefs tied across their faces shoveled great piles of offal, drifts of paper, a broken chair, a dead cat, and every other manner of trash into a cart. The cart, the horses, and the men were surrounded by a halo of flies, so thick and busy that Hannah could hear the buzz.

  When the scavenge
rs moved on, a whole crowd of young boys stayed behind to empty buckets of water and then sweep the flagstone walkways that separated the fine homes surrounding the park from the cobbled street. The houses were all of stone and brick, three and four stories tall, and Hannah knew that in each of them a legion of servants or slaves were hard at work attending to those hundreds of tasks that must be done while employers still slept.

  “Hannibal!” The giggling came again, louder now. A boy about the age of Hannah’s own brother Daniel ran up the sidewalk flicking a wet brush before him like a rattle. She could not see the boy he was after, but she heard muffled laughter and the great splash of a bucket being upturned, it seemed by the squealing over someone’s head.

  The door almost under Hannah’s window opened suddenly and with it all laughter was cut off.

  “What trouble you two will get up next, I cain’t hardly imagine.” The impatient tone was softened by reluctant amusement. Hannah could not see the housekeeper where she must be standing in the door, but she recognized Mrs. Douglas’s voice.

  “Come on now, before you catch your death. What you thinking, getting that woolly head of yours wet in an April chill? Hannibal, you best get on in, too, before Mary decide to use that brush to skin your backside. Come on now, Marcus. Put that bucket away proper, and I’ll be waiting at the kitchen door with a towel. I seen a thousand children in my time, but there never was such boys for foolishness.”