Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  “Although I have no children—or perhaps because I have no children—it seems to me quite obvious that Virginia Bly was to blame for what happened next. Strong-minded young women can no more be driven than a flock of cats. They will strike out in the end, and that is what happened. She announced to the girls that they would be married in short order, and at that, they ran off. Liam was beside himself with worry.”

  Mrs. Kerr paused to look Hannah directly in the eye. “There is nothing very unusual about this story thus far, you must be thinking. A young woman dissatisfied with her parents’ choice of a husband defies their authority. But imagine this: your father is so outraged that you would dare to flaunt his wishes that he puts a price on your head. That is what Bly did. He put a price on the heads of his two eldest daughters and he set Micah Cobb loose to bring them home, as if they were nothing more than stray dogs. And Mr. Cobb did bring them home, within two days. He is very good at what he does.”

  “Mrs. Kerr.” Hannah heard some desperation in her own voice, but she could hardly bear to listen to the rest of the story. “If you could—”

  “Get to the point of it? I am almost there now, Miss Bonner. The merchants Virginia Bly had bribed into agreeing to marry her daughters disappeared with the scandal, of course. So she married the eldest, Jane, to Micah Cobb—a man who had dragged her home tied hand and foot like a calf. Jenny was promised to Micah’s brother Jonah—a disgusting specimen if ever there was one—but she managed to slip away again, and when she came back the next day, she was Liam Kirby’s wife.”

  “Wait,” said Hannah, rubbing the ache that had begun to gather at her temple. “Jenny Bly married Liam to thwart her parents?”

  “Liam does not see it that way, but yes, that is my conclusion.”

  “So she is estranged from her family because she married against their wishes,” Hannah said. “Is that the point?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Kerr, her fist tightening on the head of her cane. “It is not. You are an impatient young woman at times, Miss Bonner.”

  Hannah bit back a sharp response. “I apologize. Please go on.”

  “Three months after the young women were married, they disappeared again.”

  “They ran away,” Hannah said. “That could not have been a surprise.”

  “I did not say that Jane and Jenny ran away, I said that they disappeared.”

  Hannah pulled up short, sure at first that she had misunderstood.

  The older woman contemplated her gloves for a long moment. “Liam believes that she did run away. Most of the city seems to be of the same opinion. In any case, none of the blackbirders have had any success in finding either Jenny or Jane.”

  A flush of irritation made Hannah’s fingers jump so that she had to wind her hands together to quiet them. “You think they are dead? Murdered?”

  “I think that is a possibility,” said Mrs. Kerr. “What I know as a certainty is that if those two young women came to harm, it was not at Liam’s hands. Liam will not rest until he finds his wife.”

  “That is a poor excuse to live his life as a bounty hunter,” Hannah said.

  “It is no excuse at all,” Mrs. Kerr agreed.

  A small and frightening thought came to Hannah, the image of a young woman bent over a plate of food with a dead child tied to her chest. “Mrs. Kerr,” said Hannah slowly. “Can you describe Jenny to me?”

  For the first time since the conversation began Mrs. Kerr’s expression softened. “You saw her younger sisters, and she looks a great deal like them, dark of hair and skin. She has unusual eyes, though. Too green to be called hazel, but shot with brown.”

  “How tall? As tall as me? As her mother?”

  The older lady looked off into the distance with her eyes narrowed, as if she were trying to call Jenny Kirby out of her memories and into flesh. “She is taller than you, I think. Not quite so tall as her mother, but then I have never seen another woman of Virginia Bly’s height. Why do you ask?”

  “There was a young woman who came to the Almshouse,” Hannah began slowly. “But she was very small of stature.”

  “Ah.” Mrs. Kerr shook her head. “I see. You can rest assured that it could not have been either of the Bly daughters, then.”

  Frustration boiled up suddenly in Hannah; she could not hold it back. “Mrs. Kerr, I have no idea what I am to do with this story you’ve told me.”

  The older lady smiled. “Put it away, then,” she said. “Until you have figured that out.”

  Hannah asked to be brought no farther than the north end of the Bowling Green so that she would have at least a few moments to regain her composure, but once she had taken her leave from Mrs. Kerr she found herself flushing with a new anger, as ungovernable as the sun itself. Words filled her mouth that she dared not say, not to anyone, not even to herself. What kind of place was this that bred people like Virginia Bly and Micah Cobb, that could take the Liam she had known and turn him into such a man?

  Mr. Livingston’s butler cast her a curious glance as he went by; one of the Delaney kitchen maids called out wishes for a good journey as she shook out her apron. Each time Hannah had to force herself to answer politely.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Bonner,” called Mr. VanderVelde as he went into the green with his dogs.

  As if I belonged here. She swallowed down her anger over and over again, but it always forced its way back into her throat, a new and cancerous growth winding itself around tendon and muscle and throbbing, like drums, like an old wound. Like a new one.

  Mrs. Douglas was waiting for her in the front hall, more anxious than Hannah had ever seen her.

  “There’s somebody from the poorhouse waiting for you in the kitchen.” A wail came from the kitchen, and the dignified Mrs. Douglas jumped a little.

  Hannah remembered suddenly why she had needed to be home promptly. “He brought the baby?”

  Mrs. Douglas nodded. “Said he was paid to deliver it to you and he didn’t care to wait. He wanted to leave that child as if it were a letter or a parcel or a basket of apples, can you imagine? I told him, I said he best wait for you, Miss Hannah. I figured there was some mistake. Are you fevered?”

  Mrs. Douglas folded her hands in front of her. Because she wants to put a hand on my forehead and does not dare, Hannah thought. Because of the color of her skin; because of the color of mine. As Curiosity would have done without hesitation, or Elizabeth, or Many-Doves. And with that thought the anger left Hannah; she came back to herself and remembered what she owed these people for their kindness and generosity. Nothing that happened out in the streets could change that: her anger had no place in this house.

  “It’s no mistake, and I’m not fevered,” she said. “But I can’t explain right now, Mrs. Douglas. I am so sorry you were concerned, I didn’t mean to be so late. But right now I must go see Kitty and take the baby to her.”

  A look came over Mrs. Douglas, dawning understanding and something like admiration. She pursed her lips and then broke into a smile.

  “Of course you do,” she said. “I see that you do.”

  Hannah found Kitty sprawled across her bed, still in her night-clothes and her face swollen with weeping. As soon as Hannah closed the door behind herself Kitty sat up, hugging a pillow to her chest with one hand while she buried her face in her handkerchief. In the overbright late-afternoon sunlight her complexion had a bluish tinge that Hannah did not like at all.

  “I don’t know how I’ll go on without Dr. Ehrlich, Hannah. I really don’t. Just when I was starting to feel myself. Richard has no compassion.” Kitty’s misery was real, but Hannah was too nervous herself to do much more than make sympathetic noises.

  She said, “Mrs. Douglas asks if you’ve finished the broth that she sent up to you.”

  Kitty fluttered her fingers toward the table where the tray sat, untouched. “I have no appetite, and let me just say right now that I won’t be bullied into eating.” She raised her face from the handkerchief to flash a furious and defiant look in
Hannah’s direction. Then her expression shifted instantly into surprise.

  “What do you have there?”

  Hannah came to sit on the edge of the bed. “What I have here is a dilemma, Kitty, and I need your advice.” She folded back the blanket to reveal the face of a newborn, wrinkled and calm and wise as a woman who had lived a hundred years. A fringe of dark red hair peeked out from beneath a dingy muslin cap, the same red as two delicately drawn eyebrows. Her eyes were the muddy color that would eventually turn brown.

  Hannah raised a finger to smooth the child’s brow. “Her mother came from the south of England, like Elizabeth. She was called Margaret White. Her husband died of a fever on the passage over and she had no way to make a living and so she ended up at the poorhouse.”

  “White,” echoed Kitty. She was staring down at the child as if she had never seen such a creature in her life.

  Hannah said, “Mrs. White died in childbed. I knew her a little; she meant to make her way as a seamstress to support herself and her daughter.”

  “A little girl?” Kitty’s voice came steady, although she would not meet Hannah’s gaze.

  “Yes.”

  “She’s healthy?”

  Hannah lifted a shoulder. “She is very small, but her heart is strong and she has no trouble breathing. And she suckles well.”

  A flush crept up Kitty’s neck as she reached out a hand to touch the small hand that had escaped the swaddling clothes.

  “Does she have a name?”

  “A child isn’t given a name at the Almshouse until it reaches six months.” Unless it reaches six months, Hannah corrected herself silently. “But if she stays there they will call her Ann, as she was born on a Thursday.”

  “She doesn’t look like an Ann at all,” said Kitty.

  The baby’s eyes were moving restlessly, lighting first on Hannah’s face and then on Kitty’s. Then she opened her mouth into a perfect round no bigger than a pea and let out a high, hooting cry.

  “She’s hungry,” Kitty said.

  “She was fed with goat’s milk just an hour ago. I asked Mrs. Douglas to send for more.”

  Kitty’s mouth pursed in disapproval. “Goat’s milk will upset her stomach. Mrs. Douglas could find a wet nurse, I’m sure.”

  The baby squeezed her eyes shut and began to cry in earnest, as if to agree.

  “It would be best to call her after her mother. Margaret White is a pretty name.” Kitty glanced nervously at Hannah. “If Elizabeth agrees, of course. You intended to bring her to Elizabeth and Nathaniel to be raised at Lake in the Clouds?”

  Hannah pressed a fist against her mouth to hide her smile. She could not help thinking of her stepmother and the endless discussions they had had about truths and half-truths, lies and white lies, the strange distinctions that O’seronni made to comfort themselves. It was a lesson she had learned, finally, and it was one she was often called on to use with Kitty.

  She said, “There are so many infants in the nursery, I thought if I could help just one … do you think I did the right thing? I’m not sure how Elizabeth will feel about taking on another child. Especially one that needs suckling.”

  “You know Elizabeth better than that, Hannah. She wouldn’t let a child go uncared for if it was in her power to help. Of course you did the right thing.”

  Kitty put out her arms for the child. They were crisscrossed with the evidence of Dr. Ehrlich’s lancet, bird tracks against skin as pale as new butter. “May I hold her?”

  Just as soon as she was in Kitty’s arms, the baby’s wailing subsided to a hiccuping whimper.

  “She’s so hungry,” Kitty whispered. “If I had any milk—” She glanced up at Hannah apologetically.

  Hannah kept her gaze averted as she went to the door, where she paused. “Maybe you do have milk, Kitty. It has not been all that long. I’ll go talk to Mrs. Douglas. Do you need anything else?”

  Kitty had already begun to unwrap the crying baby to examine her, and she had trouble focusing on Hannah long enough to answer her question. “Yes, we’ll need swaddling clothes and some decent linen. This cap won’t do at all. Please ask Amanda to come, I’m sure she will have something appropriate. And I’ll need Suzannah’s help. It’s time that I dressed.”

  Hannah sent a silent thank-you to Dr. Savard as she went down the stairs, her pulse still thundering in her ears. Will looked up when she entered his study, and came immediately to his feet.

  “Good God,” he said. “I’ve never seen you look so anxious. What’s this about a baby? Mrs. Douglas was almost beside herself. Is something wrong with Kitty?”

  “There’s nothing wrong,” Hannah said, holding up both her hands to stop him. “In fact, as of this minute I have new hope for Kitty.”

  Will sat down again, a thoughtful look replacing the worried one. “Your expression reminds me of Aunt Merriweather on the day Lydia’s engagement was announced. You must have managed some great coup. Are you going to tell me about it?”

  This made Hannah smile even more broadly. She looked up toward the closed doors on the next floor, listening for the sound of a child’s cry and hearing nothing at all.

  She said, “I was so worried about what is wrong with Kitty’s physical body that I forgot about her spirit. My mother’s people understand that a wounded spirit can hinder the body’s healing, but I lost sight of that when I spent all my time with vaccinations and microscopes and dissections.”

  Will was looking at her thoughtfully. “And how is it that you remembered so suddenly?”

  “Someone reminded me,” Hannah said. “A teacher. A friend.”

  Chapter 29

  “I know such a long visit has been trying at times, but I hope you will miss the city at least a little.”

  Hannah glanced at Will Spencer where he stood at the rail of the Good-News, his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze fixed on the horizon. In a few minutes the longshoremen would finish bringing the last of the trunks on board. Kitty and Amanda had already gone belowdecks with the wet nurse to see to the arrangement of the sleeping quarters and to settle the child, dressed now in yards of the finest muslin and lace. There was no sign of the boys, either, who had decided to explore the ship in their last minutes together. Looking for the right spot for two stowaways, thought Hannah, but she kept this thought to herself as she studied the city everyone hoped that she would miss.

  From this vantage point it was as loud and frantic as it had seemed on the day they arrived; familiarity did nothing at all to tame it. Hannah could not pretend that she regretted leaving, not even for someone as generous and good-hearted as Will Spencer.

  She said, “I will miss you and everyone on Whitehall Street.”

  He laughed openly. “You are very diplomatic.”

  “Dr. Savard said the same thing to me the other day when he asked me my opinion of Dr. Ehrlich.” Hannah looked away over the water. “He meant that I was holding back my true opinion.”

  “And were you?”

  She considered. “Yes. But there is no need to do that with you, so I will tell you what I will miss, and what I won’t.” She paused.

  “I will not miss Dr. Ehrlich and his love of the lancet, but I will miss the discussions you and I had over early breakfast every day. I won’t miss the way people on the street stare at me or the things they mutter, but I will miss the way Amanda came to me every evening to ask about my day. I will miss Mrs. Douglas, but not Mrs. Sloo. I will miss working at the Almshouse and the hospital, as I learned so much there and could learn so much more. I won’t miss the Almshouse nursery but I will dream about it. I won’t miss the stink of the streets but I will miss walking by the water. I will miss Dr. Simon’s library and the daily newspapers but I won’t miss him especially in spite of his generosity, as he never was very comfortable with me. I will miss the way Mrs. Douglas hung bags of lavender among my clothes and made sure I had extra handkerchiefs when I left for the Almshouse. And I will miss the roasted peanuts I bought sometimes from the little
man on the corner, because they were very good, and he is blind and he never asked me silly questions. Will that do?”

  Will held up both hands in surrender, laughing good-naturedly. “Let me ask a different question. Did you accomplish everything you set out to accomplish?”

  “I wrote that very question in my daybook yesterday,” Hannah said. “In some things I accomplished more than I had hoped.”

  Once Hannah had thought Will too much of a gentleman to pry, but over the past weeks she had learned that he could use silence to carve a conversation to his own ends. Since the day he had shown her the Bull’s Head, Liam’s name had never been raised between them, but it hung there now, almost visible.

  She said, “Mrs. Kerr came looking for me yesterday.”

  Will rocked back and forth on his heels while he studied the deck beneath his feet. When he looked at her again his expression was very sober.

  “I thought she would. Did she tell you what you wanted to know about Liam?”

  Hannah squinted into the sun. “She told me everything. And nothing at all.”

  There was a burst of voices on the dock, a sailor and a longshoreman nose to nose over a trunk. Hannah watched until the two men had been pulled apart and sent in different directions.

  Hannah said, “Do you believe that Jenny Kirby and her sister ran away?”

  Will pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, a gesture Hannah had come to recognize as a sign of extreme discomfort on his part. He said, “I truly do not know.”

  “Then I have only one more question,” Hannah said. “I might have asked Mrs. Kerr, if I had been able to gather my thoughts. Is Liam truly a blackbirder, or is that all some elaborate game he plays while he looks for his wife?”

  Will pushed out a breath. “The answer to that question is not as simple as you would expect.”

  “Simplify it then, for me.”

  “Very well,” said Will. “Yes, Liam is looking for his wife. Yes, he is a bounty hunter. And yes, it was the former that brought him to the latter.”