Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  “I will send down to the mill for my overseer,” she said coolly. “We will finish this conversation as soon as he is here, but we will finish it in the kitchen.” She looked Hawkeye up and down very pointedly, lingering on his moccasins. “This is not a matter for my good parlor.”

  Hawkeye had a frightening grin, and he used it now. “I don’t care where we do the talking,” he said, unfolding his long frame from Mr. Kuick’s chair. “But we’ll get to the bottom of this before I leave here today, that much I promise you.”

  Jemima fled the widow’s parlor just behind Hawkeye, dodging Georgia, who had come to answer the bell. She had no intention of listening to the widow rant until the overseer could be found.

  She had just slipped past Hawkeye when the widow yelled down the hall. “You make sure that man goes straight to the kitchen and nowhere else! Do you hear me, Jemima?”

  Hawkeye winked at her. “She thinks I’ll pocket the good silver while she ain’t watching. Maybe you best tie my hands, too, and march me to the kitchen at the end of a musket.”

  Jemima didn’t bother to answer him, but neither did she do as she had been told. While he headed for the kitchen she went in the other direction, along the front hall, through Isaiah’s empty study and then the back hall that ended in the door that led down to the root cellar.

  At this time of year, before the new crops had started to come in, the cellar was almost empty. Bushels and baskets and folded burlap sacks were her only company when she came to the cellar, which was why Jemima liked it here. She paused to listen for the sound of steps. When she was sure no one had followed her she moved aside the plank that leaned against the wall and ducked into the short passageway that ended in a tangle of bush and blackberry vines.

  The widow was afraid of another Indian uprising and she had wanted a secret escape, a way out of the house should the need ever arise. Except of course it wasn’t secret at all: the house had been built by men who lived in the village, after all, and the passageway saw almost as much traffic as the kitchen door. This was the way that Isaiah slipped out at night to meet Dye, and Jemima had long suspected that the maids used it to sneak out when the urge was on them. For her own purposes she used it only during the daylight hours, simply because she didn’t like having every step she took tracked by Georgia and reported back to the widow.

  The passageway took her out into the far end of the kitchen garden, behind a clump of evergreens. From there Jemima could go where she liked: up the mountain where she was not welcome, down to the village where she was not wanted; to the mill, which was forbidden to her. Or she could stay right where she was and contemplate the situation at hand. Georgia had trotted off toward the mill to fetch Dye. Whether or not Isaiah showed himself when she delivered her message, Jemima had no doubt he was somewhere nearby and would hear about Hawkeye’s accusations. The question was, Would he leave Dye to handle this on his own, or would he try to calm the waters with Hawkeye as he had done at the graveside?

  Either way Jemima would be in the kitchen to hear what Dye had to say. She hunkered down to wait.

  Below her the Sacandaga rushed eastward, separating the mountain from the rest of Paradise. From here she could see most of the village, including the cabin where she had been born and raised up. At that time the land it stood on had belonged to old Judge Middleton; now it belonged to his grandson Ethan and was in Dr. Todd’s control. He had rented it to the blacksmith when he married Daisy Freeman, and since then they had added another room and a porch, and the kitchen garden was twice the size it had been.

  Daisy was there now, weeding her butter beans while two of her children played nearby, the sun shining bright on their woolly black hair. But for the rush of the water Jemima thought she could hear the girls laughing.

  Her father would have never stood still to see free blacks living in the village at all, much less in a cabin built by a white man for his family. Back in those days when they were always hungry but knew right from wrong.

  Georgia’s voice brought Jemima up out of her daydream, and she curled up tight so that there was no chance of Dye catching sight of her as he strode on past with Georgia running at his heels. Jemima waited for a count of twenty and got up to go back into the house when the clatter of horses’ hooves on the bridge made her turn.

  Riders coming down from the mountain, and in a hurry; maybe Nathaniel on his way to lend his father some backup with the widow. Maybe with something else on his mind entirely.

  She waited until the horses came into view and then stood, so surprised by the riders that she had to look twice to convince herself that she wasn’t imagining things.

  Curiosity and Galileo Freeman were trotting through the village on horseback, both of them dressed for a long trip. Galileo’s rifle was in its sling on his back, for all the good it would do him, half-blind. The saddlebags were filled to bursting, but stranger than that, Curiosity had a bundle tied across her chest with a shawl. A bundle that squirmed and wiggled. A child’s fist rose up from the swaddling. A black child.

  Daisy had come up on her feet in the middle of her bean patch. She raised a hand toward her parents and waved; nothing of surprise there at all, neither in her expression nor in the way she watched them with her hand at her brow to shade her eyes.

  The children called out after them. “Goodbye! Goodbye!” Daisy hushed them and sent a concerned look up toward the millhouse. Jemima could not be seen where she stood, but she stepped back anyway, feeling the scrape of blackberry vines on her bare arms.

  The horses never slowed. The Freemans rode through Paradise in broad daylight and nobody lifted a finger to stop them. They disappeared on the Johnstown trail just like that, without a backward glance.

  Jemima stood and watched until the dust settled and the Freemans were gone. Then she listed for herself the things that she knew.

  First, the rumors that had been drifting through the village since the spring about the runaway and her child were true. The Bonner’s were running slaves, and the Freemans with them. That made them thieves, all of them. Thieves and liars and hypocrites.

  Hawkeye stood in the kitchen right now with Dye, making threats; calling names, making demands.

  Second, they were well organized. Cookie would be part of it; no doubt she stood at the door keeping watch, hiding her satisfaction. Maybe she had given some signal that Dye was out of the way and the Freemans should ride. Jemima had been worried about poison, but Cookie’s revenge was less obvious and most probably more of a satisfaction to her. She helped the Bonner’s steal from the widow and from Dye; stood there smiling while the Freemans took the child away toward safety and Hawkeye tied the widow in knots with the cold, slow flow of his righteous indignation.

  Third, they were sure enough of themselves to move by daylight. Most probably they had been doing this so long that they stopped being careful. And now they had given her the last weapon she would need to keep herself safe.

  Jemima breathed a deep sigh of relief and thanksgiving. When she could trust her expression, she went into the kitchen to watch Hawkeye deal out what Dye had coming to him.

  Chapter 36

  ——

  June 17

  Hannah kept herself so busy that there should have been no time to think of Strikes-the-Sky and for that very reason, she explained to herself, she could think of little else. While she worked in the laboratory with Richard Todd, talked to Bump, ground willow bark, examined an infected scratch on Dolly’s leg, while she ate or walked or answered questions put to her, another part of her mind was considering Strikes-the-Sky. The way his expression shifted so suddenly from arrogance to curiosity and back again, the sound of his voice and the oddities of his language, the way he held a cup when he drank, the sound of him laughing at one of Lily’s stories, the tone he took with the boys: serious and forthright, interested in their games and opinions. The few words he had said to her: thank you, and please, and in the west they talk of your skill as a healer.

  The two
men had met at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, a fact that made Hawkeye sit up and take note. What he wanted to know was, first and foremost, how they had escaped with their hides intact and, second, how two Hodenosaunee warriors had ended up fighting so far west.

  Otter and Strikes-the-Sky looked at each other and then Strikes-the-Sky said, “Back then Little Turtle was holding fast to Ohio for the Shawnee. I went because I thought it was our last chance to keep the whites at bay.”

  “And since Little Turtle gave up the fight, what do you think now?” This question came from Runs-from-Bears, who was ignoring the hard looks his wife sent him.

  “Now I will go and stand with Tecumseh, who is younger and hasn’t forgotten how to fight,” Strikes-the-Sky said calmly.

  “And will you go fight with Tecumseh as well?” Many-Doves asked her younger brother.

  He said, “Of course. I promised my wife that I would make sure her brother-in-law doesn’t lose his scalplock.”

  His playful tone did nothing to soften his sister’s grim expression. She said, “Better you should stay home with your wife. How she puts up with you I can’t imagine. And you—” She sent a sharp look at Strikes-the-Sky. “You are no better.”

  “I never claimed to be,” Strikes-the-Sky said amicably. “And before you ask I will tell you that your brother’s wife only puts up with me because her sister took me as husband and she feels obliged.”

  They had already heard about his wife, dead now three years. Tall-Woman she had been called, for her height and the habit she had of standing up in the face of trouble. When this was told late on the first night of the visit Hannah had asked a question, her first.

  “How did Tall-Woman die?”

  Strikes-the-Sky looked at her directly when he spoke. “She was new with child and there was a pain in her belly.” He touched the hard plane of his stomach near the navel. “Fever and great pain. Our healers could do nothing for her.”

  Neither could I have, Hannah might have said but she did not. She might have said: I have seen inside the body of a woman who died like that. The child quickened outside the womb and caused a rupture. But she didn’t say that either. She would not add to his grief, but she must respect him for it.

  Hannah went over the conversation around the fire again and again in spite of her strongest resolution to concentrate on other things. She was losing patience with her wayward thoughts when Charlie LeBlanc sought her out in the laboratory. What he had to say was this: his Molly was in travail and ready to bring her fifth child into the world, and could she please come as Curiosity was away? He didn’t have much to pay her but he would be glad of her help.

  The first flush of relief—Charlie had brought her a reason to stay away from home and the visitors—was soon replaced by irritation with herself for such cowardice.

  Molly was good-natured and cheerful in all things in spite of the fact that she had married dirt poor and had more boy-children and work than any one woman deserved. This labor was no different; she talked and scolded the boys and directed chores and prodded Hannah for gossip in between pains.

  While Molly never said so, it was clear to Hannah that it was the hope of a girl that sustained her through travails that went on far longer than any of them expected.

  The LeBlancs’ first daughter didn’t show herself until the sun was up. Her four brothers, ages one to eight, greeted her with no less astonishment than Charlie; they had all come to the conclusion that Molly just wasn’t capable of producing anything but males, and didn’t know where to start with the tiny red-faced girl who looked at them with wide eyes. Charlie, who was often seen carrying all four boys at once, shied from picking up his daughter until Molly shamed him into it, and then a smile cracked his face in half.

  “That’s what a man looks like when he falls in love,” said Molly with some satisfaction.

  Hannah hummed a reply that said nothing at all.

  If there had been room in the small cabin she would have taken her rest—long overdue—right there near the new mother; even the boisterous LeBlanc boys would not have been able to keep her awake. But she made herself walk the ten minutes to the Todds’ house and went to sleep on the cot in the little room off the kitchen that Curiosity used to treat the sick and isolate surly children.

  Hannah paused only long enough to take off her moccasins and send Ethan up to Lake in the Clouds with word that she would be home as soon as she could, but perhaps not until the next day.

  She woke disoriented and unsure of where she was or what time it might be, and realized that Dolly stood at the foot of the cot with a tray of food.

  “I hear there’s good news up at the LeBlancs’ today,” she said by way of greeting. “Molly sure is happy to have her a girl. They are going to call her Maddy, after Charlie’s mama. A big child, I hear?”

  “Good-sized, yes.” Hannah accepted the bowl of broth that Dolly offered and drank it all in three long gulps. “What time is it?”

  “Close to noon,” Dolly said, and then at Hannah’s surprised expression: “The world won’t fall apart ‘cause you slept for a few hours, Hannah Bonner.”

  Hannah produced a smile, but it was hard work. She intended to call on the four people she had vaccinated last night to check the incisions, and Dr. Todd had given her a list of patients to see: Mary Gathercole had a sore throat and her mother a worsening rash; Jed McGarrity was complaining about another sore tooth; Ben Cameron had chopped off a toe with a careless swing of the axe and the dressing needed changing; and Matilda Kaes was suffering greatly with the rheumatism in her back. Curiosity was gone for a few days at least but Richard Todd had no intention of leaving his laboratory as long as Hannah was home to look after less interesting complaints.

  “The only reason I come in here to bother you is your sister has been waiting out in the kitchen for an hour now,” Dolly explained. “She’s ate through near all the gingerbread and if you don’t go see what she’s got on her mind she’ll bust soon. It’s got something to do with that visitor up on the mountain, but she won’t tell me no more than that.”

  “Strikes-the-Sky,” Hannah said. “His name is Strikes-the-Sky.”

  “I heard all about it from Mama, after you finished with the vaccinations.”

  Hannah said, “The village must be talking.”

  Dolly took the blanket that had fallen to the floor and hung it out the open window to air. When she looked back at Hannah over her shoulder, her expression was thoughtful.

  “Nobody holds nothing against you, Hannah. You know that.”

  In her surprise Hannah could not think at first what to say, and Dolly took her silence as encouragement. She said, “Once the first batch of vaccinations is done they’ll calm down some, you’ll see.”

  Hannah had thought they were talking about Strikes-the-Sky, and now she was glad that she hadn’t said as much. She reached for her moccasins to hide her face, and stayed that way until Dolly had left.

  “I did not ask Molly LeBlanc to have her baby last night, you know,” Hannah said to Lily. They were sitting on the garden bench in the sun, and the day was already so hot that Hannah was tempted to open the first few buttons on her bodice. Lily had taken advantage of her age and tucked up her skirt to free her legs to the breeze. Hannah looked at her ankles and was pleased to see that there was no swelling or distortion to distinguish them.

  “I wonder about that,” Lily said primly. “I surely do.”

  “You are acting as if I arranged a birth specifically so I could avoid the visitors.”

  Lily cast her a sidelong glance. “Strikes-the-Sky was disappointed that you weren’t there last night when we were sitting around the fire.”

  Hannah pressed a hand to her stomach to still the fluttering there.

  “I suppose he told you that. Announced it to the world, did he?”

  Lily gave her a disgusted look. “I can see things without being told. What I can’t see and what I want to know from you is why you’re going out of your way to avoid him.
I think he’s wonderful.”

  “Lily Bonner,” Hannah said, torn between amusement and irritation. “You hardly know the man.”

  “I do know him,” her sister insisted. “I can tell about him from the way he tells stories. And besides that he’s handsome. Here.”

  She pulled a small roll of paper tied with a string from the pocket tied around her waist, slipped off the tie, and smoothed out the drawing on the bench between them.

  “It took me three starts but I think I got his likeness pretty well in the end.”

  “My God,” Hannah breathed in surprise.

  “You like it?” Lily was pleased, all her petulance gone and a shy smile on her face.

  It was a simple drawing, but there was something about it. Lily had captured his confidence and put it on the paper, as real as the line of the jaw or the curve of the ear. And he was handsome; there was no denying that.

  “This is beautifully done,” Hannah said simply. “What did Elizabeth say about it?”

  Lily shook her head. “She hasn’t seen it. I did it for you. To show you.”

  Hannah ran a finger over the paper. “You did not need to prove to me that you can draw, little sister. I see the evidence of that every day.”

  “Not to show you I can draw,” Lily sputtered in annoyance. “To show you. Him. Strikes-the-Sky.”

  It was true that Hannah could hardly take her eyes away from the drawing, but she didn’t know what else she was supposed to see beyond the face she knew already. “What do you want to show me about him?”

  “He’s strong and good and he tells excellent stories. And he’s not afraid of you like most of the other men. He’s perfect for you.”

  At this Hannah did laugh, to hide her distress. “No one is perfect, as you well know.”

  Lily shook her head in disappointment, as if Hannah were being purposely dense. “He’s perfect for you. I’d marry him if I were old enough but that wouldn’t be right. He’s yours, and Blue-Jay is mine.”