Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  “I’ll send young Michael along shortly,” said Mrs. Burroway. “You can trust him not to drop her.”

  With that lukewarm reassurance Hannah was free to walk away from the Almshouse, empty-handed as she was. Cicero had collected all her own things as well as the trunk of books, medical supplies, and vaccination materials Dr. Simon had assembled for Richard Todd. And she had already taken leave from the doctors and patients and from Mr. Magee, who enclosed one of her hands in both of his own and wished her well in awkward, overly formal language that he must have learned by listening to the doctors.

  “We’ll miss you,” he had said finally. “Even Mrs. Sloo will miss you, mark my words. She likes a good fight, does Mrs. Sloo, and you gave her what she likes.”

  “She wouldn’t like it if I were to stay on,” Hannah said.

  He lifted one bony shoulder in disagreement. “I wouldn’t be so sure. She’s a woman determined to be vexed, is Mrs. Sloo.”

  And so Hannah left the Almshouse smiling. She was looking forward to the walk back to Whitehall Street, her only chance to be alone today. Once she stepped through the door there would be all the furor of packing, the household as full of motion and unease as an anthill before a storm. The boys would be occupied with their most recent and involved plot to smuggle Peter and Marcus onto the sloop bound up the Hudson. Their hope was to join Daniel so that the four of them could establish a boys’ paradise on the mountain. Amanda and Will kept thinking of one more thing to send to Elizabeth or the twins, Curiosity or Nathaniel, so that the pile of luggage waiting in the hall had already grown to tremendous proportions.

  And there was Kitty, distraught at the idea of leaving and full of last-minute demands.

  She needs something or someone to worry about besides herself. Distract her mind and you will have a chance of healing her body.

  Hannah was turning this over once again when she turned the corner onto the Broad Way to find the streets crowded with people as far as she could see, and none of them going anywhere.

  She asked a passing shopgirl what was happening and got only a look of surprise and shock in response, as if a statue or a painting had suddenly spoken. It seemed that many people in the city had never seen an Indian at all, and most of those had the idea that the color of Hannah’s skin meant human language was beyond her. It happened so often when Hannah was out in the city that she had almost stopped being insulted.

  One of the Almshouse boys caught Hannah’s eye, slinking through the crowd in a way that could mean nothing good at all. She stopped him for an explanation and got instead that look that boys reserved for very slow grown-ups. He told her what everyone else seemed to know already: the Tammany Hall parade was about to start. And then he was gone into the crowds.

  Whatever Tammany Hall might be, it seemed that the parade was popular with the people of New-York. The whole city seemed to be here: washerwomen and merchants, tinkers hung about with ladles and pots and strings of forks looped around their necks, housemaids, ladies in elaborate hats and walking cloaks, chimney sweeps. People were crowded into doorways; they hung out of windows and peered down from roofs. Those who spilled into the street itself jostled and poked, jittered and fidgeted in their excitement, so that each step forward was more difficult, and then it was simply impossible to go anywhere at all. Dogs howled and a pair of oxen raised their noses to bellow at the sky; the drover swore and slapped and pulled at his animals, desperate to move them out of the way of the coming parade. Children darted up the street and back again, screaming out progress reports.

  Most of the street vendors had been caught up in the stream of people like timber caught in an ice jam: a knife grinder leaned against his cart, sound asleep with his head tilted back against the grind-wheel while the roasted-peanut vendor was surrounded by an eager and impatient public.

  Hannah was tall for a woman, but no matter how she lifted up on tiptoe and craned her neck, she could see no way to escape.

  At her elbow an old lady with a single clutch of small black teeth and a white crusting of sugar on a pendulous lower lip squinted up at her. She said, “Forget it, dearie, you’re stuck here until the parade is gone. Might as well enjoy the show, eh?” She peered up at Hannah, her eyes squinted almost shut. The grime in the creases around her eyes was so dark that it looked at first glance as if she had been tattooed.

  “Miss Bonner!” A tall man raised his hand in greeting as he made his way toward her from the row of private carriages parked to watch the parade. “Mrs. Kerr asks if you’d like to watch the parade with her.”

  Hannah raised a hand to block the sun. There was Mrs. Kerr waving a handkerchief so fiercely that the ostrich feathers on her hat—dyed orange and green to match her striped gown—swayed like branches in a strong breeze.

  What Hannah wanted to do was to get home, but if she must watch the parade she might as well see it clearly. She let herself be guided to Mrs. Kerr, who fussed until she was settled among velvet cushions sprouting silk tassels three fingers thick.

  “Isn’t this just fine,” said the old lady. “I was hoping to see you again before you leave for home. And see, here come the revelers.”

  A procession appeared from around a corner, bursting in a roar of color and sound upon them.

  Children came first, all of them boys, trotting in wild, sweeping curves, bells and rattles on rawhide strings tied around their waists, bells swinging from hips and knees, bells sewn to sleeves. Some of them carried drums on leather belts, and they pounded out a heavy rhythm.

  An old man with flowing white hair and beard trotted alongside them on a donkey that had been decked out in streamers of every color. He had a bucktail tied to his beaver hat and stripes of paint across each cheekbone, and he threatened the children who rushed up to him with great swipes of a rusty tomahawk, sending them screaming and laughing in every direction. A young boy bolted forward to grab at the saddlebag that hung low over the belly of the animal, but the old man captured him and dragged him over the donkey’s neck to whack noisily at his rump with the flat of the tomahawk.

  “The elder Mr. Mason,” said Mrs. Kerr, raising her voice to be heard over the crowd. “His son is one of the sachems, and he dearly loves a parade.”

  “The braves!” the crowd screamed. “The Tammany braves!”

  Then the chanting began, and the skin rose on Hannah’s neck.

  “The heart and soul of Tammany,” explained Mrs. Kerr. “Respectable businessmen, all of them.”

  A hundred men came trotting down the Broad Way, all of them white and each painted to look like an Indian. They wore caps with tails of horsehair at the crown above faces smeared with paint.

  “De Witt would like to scalp each and every one of them with their own tomahawks.” Mrs. Kerr was laughing. “The silly sods.”

  “Senator Clinton doesn’t approve of this … demonstration?”

  Mrs. Kerr waved a gloved hand. “He has no use for Tammany. These are all Aaron Burr’s men, you see.”

  Hannah didn’t see at all; she recognized the names of some of the most prominent New-York politicians, but had never taken the time to learn much about their factions or battles.

  The men from Tammany Hall were dressed in buckskin leggings and hunting shirts, some of them with elaborate capes decorated with quillwork and beading. Others wore their own clothes with only the gaudy face paint and a bucktail pinned to a hat. Even the men who had kept their beards and long mustaches had painted themselves, so that they reminded Hannah more of the minstrels she had seen at Scottish fairs than of the Indian warriors they meant to be.

  But the worst of it, the thing that left Hannah breathless, was the masks.

  They wore masks made of braided cornhusks and masks that had been carved from living willow in a ceremony that required three days to appease the spirit of the tree. Many were carefully painted and decorated with long swatches of horsehair and bits of metal nailed around the eyeholes. These masks were as familiar to her as the faces of her own family:
none of them had been made by white hands, and every single one of them had a sacred purpose.

  “Laughing Beggar,” Hannah whispered to herself as a man ran by.

  “What was that?” Mrs. Kerr cupped a hand around her ear.

  “That mask,” Hannah repeated as she pointed. “It is called ‘Laughing Beggar.’ My uncle wore a mask just like that one at the last Maple Festival.”

  To drive away evil spirits, she would have added, but there was no hope of being heard now as the men had begun to chant, and the crowd echoed them. Nonsense syllables strung together like the babbling of babies, accompanied by the beating of drums and feet against the road.

  When the braves had passed, a smaller group of men appeared, walking sedately.

  “There’s Burr,” said Mrs. Kerr. “The vice president, you know, but always scheming for more. You see how he simpers and smirks and makes love to every man who casts a vote. Itching for a crown to wear, even if he has to forge it himself.”

  The last party in the procession was led by a large man with such a massive head and huge round belly that he looked in danger of pitching forward. Behind him walked a woman almost as tall as he. Hannah recognized Virginia Bly from the Bull’s Head even at a distance. The three younger women who walked behind them Hannah had never seen before, but from their coloring she guessed that these were the Bly daughters. All four of the women were dressed in the finest doeskin overdresses; even from a distance Hannah could make out the heavy bead- and quillwork.

  The procession had come to a stop. Mr. Bly climbed up onto a large wooden stand in the middle of the street to hold out his arms. His cheeks were painted with random swipes of red and yellow and black; his dress was half O’seronni and half some strange O’seronni idea of what a Kahnyen’kehàka warrior might wear. But the headpiece was no hastily put together combination of feathers and rawhide.

  A long train of eagle feathers cascaded down from a skullcap made of splints covered with fine beaded doeskin. It was the headpiece of a great warrior, of a sachem who had won many battles for his people. In some longhouse to the north, in a village on the Mohawk or Sacandaga or in the valleys where the Seneca and Onandaga lived, women had sat together for long hours over that headpiece. Women like Virginia Bly; women like Hannah’s mother and grandmothers. The urge to rush forward and grab it from his head was almost more than she could resist.

  Bly raised his voice, deep and loud enough to resonate over the crowd.

  “My friends! Let us bow our heads and remember the Great Grand Sachem of the Thirteen United Fires. May he remain in the protection of the Maker of Life, the Great Spirit who has raised him to his exalted position. May the wisdom of the sachems who went before him guide him to transcendent splendor of his greatness.”

  As he droned on the crowd began to disperse, first single people slipping away and then larger groups. When Mrs. Kerr reached forward to rap with her cane on the box, Hannah jumped in surprise; she had been so taken up by the spectacle in front of her that she had all but forgotten where she sat.

  “George, drive on as soon as you are able. Take us along the shore for a little, away from the crowds. Miss Bonner needs some fresh air and the chance to regain her composure.”

  “I want to walk back to Whitehall Street,” Hannah said.

  “Do you? Through this crowd?” Mrs. Kerr looked out over the street. “Or would you prefer to ride a while with me and hear about Virginia Bly and her daughters? You needn’t look so surprised. Your expression gives away a great deal, my dear.”

  The urge to protest was so strong that Hannah tasted it like salt on her tongue. “Why would I want to hear about Virginia Bly and her daughters?”

  Mrs. Kerr fluttered her fingers at this question. “Do not play the innocent with me, Miss Bonner. If you don’t care to hear the story I have to tell, I will see you straight back to Whitehall Street.” And then, after a moment in which Hannah weighed and rejected every possible response: “I thought so.”

  It was five minutes or more before the noise of the crowd was behind them. Mrs. Kerr seemed satisfied to sit and watch the oyster boats along the shore. Hannah could not bring herself to ask questions, simply because she could not think where to start.

  Finally Mrs. Kerr seemed to remember that she was not alone. Her gaze shifted to Hannah.

  “I go to watch that parade because it amuses me to see men make such fools of themselves, but of course you would be offended.” Another long silence followed.

  “Mrs. Kerr—”

  “Virginia Bly had five daughters,” the old lady began, as if Hannah had not spoken. “The three youngest you saw today. There are many rumors about those three, the favorite being that at night their mother keeps them locked in a room with the windows nailed shut. That rumor happens to be true. Her two elder daughters ran away, you see, and she is determined to keep these ones at home.

  “The man who is probably still speaking back there on the Broad Way is her husband, the innkeeper at the Bull’s Head, where Will Spencer took you the afternoon you heard from him about Libertas. Did you think he would not tell us about that trip? We depend on one another for honesty, Miss Bonner. Of course he told us.

  “Now you must realize that Libertas watches Harry Bly closely. For example, I can tell you that yesterday he took Micah Cobb’s place in a meeting of the blackbirders. Mr. Cobb has gone north in search of …” She paused to consider her words. “A mutual friend of yours and mine. Of course you must be worried for that friend, but as of this moment I have no news to report. What I can tell you—and what you want to know—is the story of Virginia Bly’s eldest daughter, Jenny. Who is Liam Kirby’s wife.”

  Hannah flushed with confusion and embarrassment. “Since you speak so openly to me, Mrs. Kerr, I hope you will pardon my own bluntness. I’m not especially interested in discussing Liam Kirby or his wife with you, or with anyone.”

  The older lady sat back among the cushions with an abrupt laugh. “Someday I must meet your stepmother and congratulate her on your education. Such quickness of thought and speech in a woman of your young age is to be commended. I will admit that I have started this conversation badly—”

  “You need not have started it at all,” Hannah interrupted, unable to govern her temper. “This is a personal matter, and to be very honest, I am surprised and disappointed that Will Spencer would have shared any of my history with you.”

  “Now you are jumping to conclusions, Miss Bonner,” Mrs. Kerr said more sharply. “Will Spencer did not divulge any confidence to me. What I know of your situation I know from Liam Kirby himself.”

  Hannah felt the blood draining from her face. She opened her mouth but no sound would come out.

  “Shall I go on?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, then. I will begin. You may stop me at any point, although I doubt you will.

  “You are wondering how I know Liam. It seems an unlikely acquaintance, that is what you are thinking. And of course you are correct, but only because you don’t know that my late husband had a small fleet of merchant ships, and he loved nothing better than to go off to sea now and then to see to business himself. A boy at heart, you see. A man who has no children—for whatever reason—will ever be a boy.

  “Mr. Kerr dreamed of going to sea, but his father would not let him join the navy. So he made up for it in his later years by traveling on his own ships. That is how they met, Mr. Kerr and Liam Kirby, on a voyage to the Spice Islands. When you saw him in Paradise I will assume he told you about his years at sea.”

  Hannah said, “You knew Liam was coming to Paradise?”

  Mrs. Kerr shook her head so that her feathers danced. “Miss Bonner, if you make me jump about in this story we will both end up more confused than we started. Now, as I was saying, Mr. Kerr and Liam first met on board the Nutmeg. The red dog caught Mr. Kerr’s eye first—he was devoted to dogs, you see. At one point we had six of them, each bigger than the last. Dogs can be comforting creatures but I do d
raw the line at sharing my bed with six of them … I digress.

  “When the ship returned to New-York, Mr. Kerr brought Liam and his dog home to Park Street, as was his habit with young strays. My husband was an unconventional man, Miss Bonner, or he would never have taken me as wife. What interested him he must have near him, and so young Liam spent much of his time with us when he was not at sea. I grew very fond of him.”

  “And he told you about Lake in the Clouds?”

  “In time he spoke of the home he had left behind,” said Mrs. Kerr. “But not in great detail. For the most part he talked about his brother, your father, and how you had disappeared into the Scottish countryside.”

  Hannah could barely breathe, much less speak, but Mrs. Kerr did not seem to want any commentary.

  “We need not go into his accusations. The point is that he spoke of you often, and he believed you lost to him forever. Then he came back from a long absence—a journey to China, if you can imagine such a thing—and he caught sight of Jenny Bly.

  “That was the end of his career on the seas. He took up work here in the city, carpentry for the most part, and twice a week he called at the Blys’, or he attempted to call on them. Virginia Bly would not take his interest in her daughter seriously, you understand. A young man with no connections and no prospects would not do for her daughters. But Jenny gave Liam enough encouragement to keep his hopes up, most probably simply because it plagued her mother, who had finally managed to find suitable husbands for the girls. Jenny was meant for Mr. Hufnagle—a German coffee merchant new to the city, widowed, and twice her age. A white man with resources, you understand, was her goal. One willing to marry a red-skinned young woman with a generous dowry.

  “Every day Mr. Kerr would hear about Liam’s progress, or I should say, his lack of progress, with Jenny Bly—Liam was renting a room above our stables, you see. By that time Mr. Kerr had fallen quite ill, and he took great comfort in Liam’s visits. He was excessively attached to the boy. As was I, I must admit.