Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  Curiosity broke away and came to the door, and Elizabeth started to see her face, drawn down in weariness and grief.

  “I cain’t stay,” she said. “I just come up to fetch Hannah, if she’ll come along to lend a hand. Reuben passed on at dawn and I need her help laying him out. And we got a lot to talk about, the two of us.”

  Elizabeth let them go without her because she could not bear the idea of sharing the task of tending to another dead child, nor did she want any part of the conversation. She stayed behind to see to her own family’s needs, but she could not keep her thoughts from following Curiosity and Hannah down the mountain. But while she ladled out porridge and spoke to the children and mended a tear in Hawkeye’s hunting shirt and examined Lily’s drawing of Nathaniel, Elizabeth grew more and more certain that she had been wrong to stay behind.

  “I am a coward,” she muttered aloud to herself, and Nathaniel’s head came up sharply from the bullet mold before him on the worktable.

  She blew out a breath. “I should have gone with them to help,” she said. “To be with Curiosity.”

  Nathaniel studied her for a moment, and then dropped his gaze back to his work. “You don’t have to take up every burden, Boots. And you’re no coward.”

  She made a clicking sound in her throat, a sound Nathaniel recognized very well: Elizabeth denying herself the argument she wanted, swallowing down sharp words.

  He finished wiping out the bullet mold with the oily rag and got up to put it back on the shelf where it belonged, taking longer than he needed so that when he turned around again she had had time to compose her expression.

  “Go on and say whatever it is you have on your mind, Nathaniel,” she said to his back. “I can feel you working up to it.”

  He laughed at that, a gruff laugh; she had him down to rights.

  “The boys were friends, but I don’t want the youngsters at the burial. Not with things so up in the air.”

  Her shoulders stiffened slightly, but the movement of the rag never faltered. Nathaniel braced himself for the argument that must come. She would insist that the children be present at the funeral, not so much out of friendship or good manners or propriety; those things concerned her far less than they had when she first came to Paradise.

  The reason she would want them at the burial was the reason he wanted them kept away. It was the one friction point between them: Elizabeth lived in fear of raising up children ignorant of the workings of the world, overly protected and inward-turned; Nathaniel lived to protect them, and to teach them, first and foremost, how to protect themselves. In his quieter moments he recognized that he and Elizabeth were well matched in their worries, each tempering the other. So he expected an argument from his wife, and instead got something else, something that worried him more than any sharp words.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I fear you are right.”

  Chapter 33

  Jemima pulled her shawl down more tightly over her bonnet and shoulders, stamped her feet in her stiff new leather boots against the creeping damp, and counted again: one coffin of green wood wet with rain, three Indians, seven whites, sixteen blacks—a few free, the rest slaves—and not a single child in the crowd gathered around the muddy hole in the slaves’ burial plot. From her place at the foot of the open grave Jemima could see the Bonner’s at the back of the mourners, but there was no sign of the twins.

  “We commend the body of this child to the ground.” Mr. Gathercole was using his preaching voice, crackling and high and as pleasing as a swarm of blackfly. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  They stood three abreast, Mr. Gathercole, Jemima, and then Isaiah. Behind them was Ambrose Dye; Jemima could feel him at her back, standing too close. In another time and place she would have spoken a few choice words to cure him of his impertinence, but now she must simply bear it. If she stepped away from him and closer to her husband, it was likely that Isaiah would simply move away in turn, and Jemima would not take that chance, not with Hannah Bonner looking right at her.

  Being caught like this between her husband and his lover was strange indeed, both oddly satisfying and uncomfortable in a way she didn’t want to think about.

  Directly across from them Cookie and her sons stood at the head of the grave with all the Negroes gathered behind them. Curiosity and Galileo were there, Daisy and Joshua Hench. Even Jock Hindle had allowed his two slaves to come. And all of them were looking hard, eyes as hot as a fever moving fitfully from the preacher to Isaiah to the overseer and back again.

  There were rumors all over the village, whispers as unstoppable as the leaves that fluttered down from the trees in September. The blacks suspected Ambrose Dye of murder, although nobody ever put it that plain. Nobody, black or white, would come out and make such an accusation without hard proof.

  Jemima knew that Dye had murder in him, but she couldn’t believe that he had anything to do with killing the boy. It made no sense. First, because Reuben was worth a great deal of money and Dye was tightfisted, and second, because a white man could be charged with killing a slave if he couldn’t prove cause. He would hang if he drew the wrong judge.

  Even if it came to that and the judge was content to fine Ambrose Dye for his temper, the widow would not put up with an overseer who went about so carelessly with her valuable property; she would put him out with a reference. He would have to go out to Johnstown or farther to find the kind of work he did, and leave Isaiah behind. As much as Jemima liked that idea, she could not imagine that Dye would risk so much.

  Unless there was something she was missing.

  From the look on Curiosity’s face she thought that the old woman might know what that something was. She had nursed the boy until he died, after all; if anybody knew what had happened that day at the mill, it would be Curiosity. Not that the word of an old black woman would mean anything. When Judge O’Brien came through on his circuit two things were certain: crimes against property would be punished to the full extent of the law, and no black, especially not a free black woman, would be allowed to testify as a witness in his court.

  Curiosity could no more speak up than she could shoot Dye on a crowded street. She would keep what she knew to herself, no matter how heavy a burden it might be.

  Reuben’s mother, on the other hand, looked dried out and hollow as a gourd, worn down, as if something vital had been drained out of her. Cookie was such a strong presence in the house that Jemima forgot how small she really was, no taller than a ten-year-old child but ropy with muscle. Standing between her grown sons she seemed to have shrunk even more. Jemima had the sense that if she should touch her, Cookie would simply topple over with a rustling sound, crack to a million dry pieces that would blow away with the wind.

  Grief could do strange things to a woman. Jemima’s own younger brothers had outlived their mother by a few hours; at the time she had not realized what a blessing that had been.

  While Mr. Gathercole droned on Cookie was creeping forward inch by inch until she stood with the worn toes of her clogs extending out over the edge of the grave. She swayed once and again, and Jemima held her breath, sure that she was about to see a mother fling herself on top of her child’s coffin. She had heard of such things, but never seen the like.

  Levi put a hand on her shoulder and the moment passed just as the preacher came to the end of his service.

  “Who would like to say a word?” Mr. Gathercole turned his head right and then left. “Who would like to speak for this child?”

  Everyone except Cookie turned their eyes to Jemima. As the mistress of the slaves the widow Kuick would have said a few words about the unfathomable will of the Almighty, about Abraham’s sacrifice, and the call to judgment. Things Jemima should say in her place; things she would say, if she could only open her mouth. Anybody who had spent their Sundays in church or with a bible could do what was required of her now, but to her surprise Isaiah cleared his throat roughly and stepped forward.

  “Reuben was a good boy.” He spoke
clearly, in a deep and rich voice that Jemima had never heard before. It was a sound that seemed to reach Cookie as nothing else had. A look of confusion crossed her face and then she straightened her shoulders and raised her head.

  “Of sweet and tractable disposition. He was quick and bright and clever. He was respectful of his elders.” Isaiah paused, the muscles in his jaw flexing hard. His eyes were reddened at the rims, as if he had been crying or was about to. And more than that, Jemima could hear no trace of mockery in his voice, see nothing in his posture but real sorrow. She had to struggle to hide her surprise.

  “His special talent was music,” Isaiah went on. “When he could not play his fiddle, he sang. It was a joy to hear him. I am sorry—” His voice cracked and broke and he cleared his throat.

  “He was born to this household, and he would have grown to be a fine man in it. I am sorry that he is gone. I extend my sympathies and the sympathies of my mother and wife to Reuben’s mother Cookie, who has served us well and faithfully for many years, and to his brothers, Ezekiel and Levi, who have been with us since they were born. We will miss Reuben as you will miss him.”

  Cookie blinked and blinked again; opened her mouth and shut it. Ezekiel leaned down to whisper something at her ear and she shook her head sharply.

  Isaiah said, “Mr. Dye has a few words to say as well.”

  Many of the blacks had been rocking back and forth on their heels as they prayed and listened, but now every single one of them went as still as the boy in his coffin. A spark jumped among them, suspicion and anger flaring high and bright. A shiver ran up Jemima’s back; so much hatred focused so clearly, so absolutely, on the man standing just behind her.

  “Mrs. Kuick,” Isaiah said quietly. “Please step aside and let Mr. Dye come forward.”

  Jemima did as she was bid, edging the preacher aside so that she could keep her view of Cookie, of Isaiah and of Ambrose Dye. There was some mystery here she had not imagined, and the key to understanding it was within her reach.

  Dye stood straight and tall, his head erect, and folded his hands at the small of his back. He looked over the blacks the way he always did, his thin lips pressed together in a frown. Jemima rarely had a chance to see him this close. He had scraped himself raw shaving, and a trickle of blood had dried just above his Adam’s apple.

  “Reuben learned right quick when he wanted to,” he said, his voice booming out over the gathering as if he were calling a dance. “Never shirked a task, never talked back. A good worker, with a feel for wood.”

  He made a move as if he wanted to step away from the grave, but Isaiah stopped him.

  Later Jemima would wonder at how a few simple movements that meant nothing taken one by one could add up to something so big. She saw Isaiah’s hand raise itself to grasp Dye’s shoulder, saw the fingers grip and tense: a common gesture between men, one that said wait, and don’t go yet.

  Jemima watched Isaiah’s hand leave his lover’s shoulder and trail down the length of his arm. Dye jerked, and something passed between them as urgent and fast as lightning. Nothing to do with the needs of the flesh; nothing of love or lust, but something deeper and more complicated. As if they had made a pact of some kind and Dye had to be reminded of his part of the bargain.

  The overseer cleared his throat and said, “He’ll be missed at the mill. By all of us.” A long pause, stretching out and out. Dye straightened his back and dropped his gaze to study the coffin.

  He said, “We regret the senseless accident that sent Reuben too early to his reward.”

  A murmur moved through the crowd like a gusting wind. Gazes shifted from the overseer to Isaiah and back again to the overseer. Ambrose Dye, who had once dealt with a runaway by breaking all the bones in his feet without flinching or pausing. As if he couldn’t even hear the screams, Cookie had said when she told the story to Dolly. As if he was stone-deaf. That man stood in front of the slaves he thought of as chattel, and declared himself regretful.

  And just that simply, Jemima knew that the rumors were true. Something had happened that day at the mill that had nothing to do with the story they had been told. Somehow Dye had let his anger get the best of him.

  If she closed her eyes, Jemima could almost see it.

  Reuben walking by a window where he shouldn’t have been, or into a storage room where he wasn’t expected. Dye coming to his feet with a roar, Isaiah turning away to hide his face. Reuben’s expression, first startled and confused, then blank with understanding, and finally wild with fear.

  Exactly what happened then, how that last desperate and furious step came to pass, that didn’t matter. What did matter was the look on Cookie’s face. She knew the overseer was responsible for her son’s death, but did she know why? Had he told the story, or had that been burned out of him, as Dye intended?

  They were all waiting for Cookie to speak. She might end all of this with a nod, a word, a shrug of her shoulder; she might open her mouth and let the truth pour out, hot and sour. She had the power now; she could take everything away that Jemima had worked so hard to get for herself.

  Or maybe she would not say out loud what she knew; maybe the anger to be seen in the sea of black faces burned too hot for such a reasoned and hopeless gesture. Jemima thought fleetingly of the riots in the French Indies, blacks rising up and white blood spilled. Heads on spikes, women raped until they begged for death, children flayed raw. She saw the possibility of blood in Cookie’s face, the black eyes fixed on Dye without blinking.

  Cookie was the only slave allowed to stay in the main house at night. Every evening she sharpened knives, set bread dough to rising, put oats or peas to soak before she went to sleep on her pallet in front of the hearth. The weapons available to her were many: fire, steel, the leaves of certain plants cut up fine and sprinkled like rosemary over a joint of lamb. The question was whether or not she was beyond caring about the bloodbath that would follow.

  The others were touching her, but she would not be turned away. She held Dye’s gaze and things passed over her face too terrible and terrifying to name.

  When she opened her mouth the sound that came out was strangely her own, calm and steady. She said, “It’s hard times when folks got no safe place to go but the other side.”

  Then she held out an arm, elbow locked, and opened her fist. A shower of earth fell over the coffin that held her youngest child, her son. With one last look, first at Isaiah and then at Ambrose Dye, she turned her head to the side and spat on the ground, turned further and walked away.

  The crowd parted for her and then fell in behind.

  Jemima heard herself breathing fast and hard. Whatever they suspected, whatever they knew, they would not speak the words out loud, not today. She was safe, for the time being.

  The rain started to fall in earnest while Hannah, Bump, and the Freemans walked away from the graveyard in the direction of the Todds’, so that conversation was impractical. Hannah was not unhappy to have the quarter hour to think. Once she had presented herself to Richard Todd she would be too busy to do anything but answer his questions, and there was a great deal to think about.

  She walked behind Curiosity, who had taken her husband’s arm in a gesture that would look to most as nothing more than the companionable ways of a couple long married. Hannah thought that it probably had as much to do with the fact that Galileo’s eyesight was so poor, but she liked to see them together regardless of the reason. Their easy familiarity and the comfort they took from one another was soothing after the things she had seen this day. She had helped lay out many a person for burial, but seldom had she seen anything as sad as Reuben or his mother, washing the boy’s ruined body with gentle hands.

  At the burial Hannah had been overwhelmed by a strange but persistent image of Cookie hovering over them in the air, suspended there by the pure force of her anger, skirts fluttering in the wind while she spat a curse down on Ambrose Dye’s head.

  They all held Dye responsible for Reuben’s death, even Curiosity, in
spite of the fact that she had no proof, and admitted that openly. In the long hours by his bedside she had heard him speak only a few words, and those came in fever delirium at the end. Come dance with me, Mama, and Hand me that fiddle, and God strike me blind if I don’t.

  The truth was twofold. First, they would never have enough proof to accuse Dye of anything, and that made him innocent in the eyes of white law. Second, and more important, the widow’s slaves, the people who knew him best of all, could not, would not, imagine Dye innocent of anything at all.

  The part of Hannah that was Kahnyen’kehàka understood that second truth better than the first one. Cookie and her sons wanted revenge, yes. Of course. But they could not have it without bringing a world of trouble down, a bloodletting that would move far beyond them to other people they cared about.

  Curiosity glanced over her shoulder at Hannah and produced a small and very tired smile.

  “I’ll call a meeting at the trading post tomorrow evening.” Richard Todd did not bother to look up from the sheaf of papers on the desk before him. He was reading through Hannah’s notes from the Kine-Pox Institution office for the third time with a quill in his hand, making notes to himself and asking her questions now and then, sometimes questions he had asked already and she had answered; whether to test her memory or her ability to keep her temper, Hannah was not sure.

  Richard had worked out a plan to vaccinate the whole village, and he was so well satisfied with it and himself that anything Hannah had to say was of no interest at all.

  Hannah knew the people of Paradise, a cautious and distrustful lot on the whole. Many of them would no more line up to be vaccinated than they would walk up to a bear and slap it on the nose. Richard knew that too, of course, but he intended to bully them all into seeing things his way. He told Hannah about his plans not because he wanted her thoughts or suggestions, but because he thought out loud.

  He would send Bump down to the trading post, the tavern, the church, and the blacksmithy to start the word moving. Any man who showed up to listen to what he had to say tomorrow night at the trading post and brought his family along would get a free tankard of ale for his troubles.