Lake in the Clouds

by Sara Donati

  He was still sitting on the porch, but now Lily was with him and they had opened the book Gabriel Oak gave her across their laps. From the doorway Elizabeth listened and watched as they turned the pages.

  “And this, A. Montgomery? Who is that?”

  “Ah,” he said with a grin. “Friend Gabriel drew that down South Carolina way. That’s old Archie, a colonel do you see, by his uniform.”

  “It says 1760,” Lily offered.

  “Hmmm. So it would have been. When the Cherokee made short work of the militia at Echoe. That was just before Gabriel decided he’d had enough of the wars and got it into his head to strike out north.”

  “When you came here?”

  “For the first time, yes. That following spring. I expect you’ll come across some drawings of people you know in the next pages. And see, there’s Half Moon Lake, as ever was. When your grandfather and the rest of the settlers lived right on the shore.”

  “Before the Kahnyen’kehàka burned the village,” Lily said. “And see here in the margin, he wrote ‘Alfred M.’ I think that must be my grandfather Middleton.”

  “May I see?” Elizabeth’s voice broke as they turned to her, the old man and the little girl, both smiling in welcome.

  They made room for her between them and Lily fussed with the old book until she was satisfied with the way it sat on her mother’s lap.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “That is your grandfather. He looks very young there. And Axel Metzler, my goodness.” She had to hold back a laugh. “I almost didn’t recognize him. I never knew his wife, but I expect that must be her?”

  She had directed the question to Bump, and he nodded. “So it is.”

  “Look,” Lily said, with growing excitement. “Uncle Todd’s mother and father, it says so.”

  “You must show him, Lily, he’ll be very interested.”

  But the girl barely heard her in her growing excitement. She turned the page and stopped. “Oh,” she breathed softly. “Oh, Ma. Look.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said, blinking in the sunlight. “I see. My mother.”

  The likeness seemed to glow on the page. Dark hair covered by a plain Quaker cap, a heart-shaped face with wide-set eyes, a dimpled chin, and a shy smile. Just seventeen years old, by the date, newly married and separated from her family to follow her husband into the wilderness.

  “You look so much like her,” Lily said. “Doesn’t she look like her mother, Bump?”

  He made a whispery sound. “She does indeed, and so do you favor her.”

  “Were you there when Gabriel drew this?” Lily asked, leaning across the book to look at him very earnestly. “Do you remember my grandmother Middleton?”

  “Of course I do,” Bump said. “I could no more forget Maddy than I could forget my own mam’s face. She was a fiery spirit, full of life. Paradise was a different place once she went away.”

  “Why did you go to England?” Lily asked, touching the curve of her grandmother’s lip as if she might somehow get an answer from the likeness on the page. And then to Bump: “Did she tell you?”

  He looked a little startled at the idea. “Oh no. We came back to Paradise one spring and heard that she was gone, and so we never saw her again. I’ve wondered now and then what it was that made her go.”

  “What’s this that Gabriel wrote beneath her name?” Lily put her nose right to the page and read aloud. “‘McB 4, 2, 1, 3.’”

  “A quotation,” Elizabeth said. “I would suppose from MacBeth.”

  Lily leapt up from the stair and dashed into the house, calling behind her: “Wait! I know where it is!” And came back again before either Elizabeth or Bump could stop her.

  She thrust the volume into her mother’s hands and stood jiggling with impatience until Elizabeth had found the passage.

  His flight was madness: when our actions do not,

  Our fears do make us traitors.

  Lily’s face was such a study in thoughtfulness and earnest concern that Elizabeth could not look away from her.

  “Do you understand what it means?” Lily demanded, looking back and forth between them.

  “I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said, although she had some uneasy sense that its meaning was there on the page if she only would study her mother’s image long enough. “But I will think about it.”

  Bump smiled at her, his bright blue eyes lost in a sea of folds. “That would please Friend Gabriel,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

  For the rest of the day Elizabeth could think of little else beyond the drawing Gabriel Oak had done of her mother. With one part of her mind she recognized that the conversation on the porch was no coincidence: Bump had arranged it just exactly that way, to give her something to distract her. With her head so full of her mother, Elizabeth had little time to reflect on Kitty or Hannah’s troubles with Judge O’Brien, on Manny and Jode, or even the scarlet fever.

  When she told Nathaniel the story he was only vaguely interested. “I wouldn’t go trying to read something into a drawing more than forty years old,” he said, stopping to kiss her in case she took his common sense for a lack of interest. “But you fret away at that quote, Boots, if it makes you happy.” Next she went to Many-Doves in the hope that another woman would see what she saw: the questions raised that must be answered.

  She found her in the cornfield, and so Elizabeth picked up a hoe and told the story while they cut weeds out from among the corn plants.

  Many-Doves listened in her usual thoughtful way and said, “Gabriel Oak was one of the quiet ones, the Quakers. So was your mother. It might have been some conversation between them that he wrote down, as your Lily does now. When she makes a drawing she writes odd words and sayings beneath it.”

  This was true, and it gave Elizabeth pause.

  “What were you hoping?” Many-Doves asked her.

  “I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said. “Some understanding of my mother. I was so young when she died, I never thought to ask her any of the questions I ask myself now.”

  Many-Doves stopped to smile at her, and then she held a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Walks-Ahead is bringing her new husband home to us, look.”

  Elizabeth was almost afraid to turn, but she could not resist, and then she stood motionless among the swaying cornstalks, struck by the sight.

  “When she is gone from us this is how I will remember her.” She said it aloud, and Many-Doves nodded in agreement.

  “He will be a good husband,” Elizabeth said, because it was the thing she needed to hear, the only way to make the coming separation bearable.

  Many-Doves was silent for a moment, only her eyes moving as she watched them come closer. “He is strong enough for her,” she said finally, touching on the truth that Elizabeth had not been able to find words for. Strikes-the-Sky was indeed strong in body and spirit and force of will, strong enough to be a husband to Walks-Ahead.

  Hannah caught sight of them then and raised a hand in greeting, all the joy in the world shining there in her beloved face.

  “This is how we’ll handle it,” Nathaniel said over supper. He looked at each of them in turn. “O’Brien is going to read out the complaint. No comments of any kind, not even a burp. You understand me, Lily? Daniel?”

  The twins nodded, staring fixedly at their plates.

  “No doubt Jemima will have something to say then, and the widow, too, for all I know. O’Brien is likely to ask them questions. This ain’t a trial, you understand, and he’s under no obligation to give each side a turn. It’s an inquiry, is the way Jed explained it to me. Which means O’Brien can pretty much do what he damn well pleases.”

  Hawkeye’s expression was calm, mostly, Elizabeth thought, because he must have a plan of his own. If things did not go well he would kill O’Brien before he let him lay a hand on Hannah. To protect his granddaughter he would do that and more, without hesitation or apology.

  Nathaniel was taking another approach. He said, “When it comes your turn to talk, daughter, yo
u say what you’ve got to say with as few words as possible. Answer his questions just as simply as you can.” He paused, and stared down at his plate. When he raised his head again, there was a still anger in his eyes.

  “We don’t know exactly what Jemima has been telling him, but whatever it is you’ll have Richard there to back you up.”

  Elizabeth had been watching Hannah all evening. She looked for some sign of worry or confusion but found nothing there but calm acceptance and a faraway thoughtfulness that Elizabeth recognized for what it must be. The way Strikes-the-Sky looked at her and she looked at him left no doubt how things stood between them.

  “Hannah, have you heard anything I said?” Nathaniel frowned at her, and got a smile for his trouble.

  “I heard every word,” she said.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you’re keeping your wits about you,” Nathaniel said dryly. “Let’s hope the rest of us can do the same.”

  Jed McGarrity had never wanted to be constable but somehow he ended up with the title and the trouble too, shortly after Judge Middleton died. Since that day all his worst fears had come to find him and more. There was just nothing worse than having to knock on a man’s door to ask hard questions when you knew most of the answers anyway. He couldn’t look the other way anymore when a trapper helped himself to somebody else’s lines, nor could he cluck a few sympathetic sounds in Axel’s direction when Ben Cameron got so drunk that he broke the tavern door in looking for a lost shoe. When old Dubonnet, a man as mean as God ever put on the earth, set out to beat his wife’s head in with a wood stave and took a knife in the gut instead it was Jed who had to sort things out. For the first year it had been bad, and then it got worse when Sam Beck—a man with a sense of humor and an understanding of the way things worked on the frontier—gave up the post of circuit judge to move west. Then Baldy O’Brien, who had been the tax collector for long enough to make himself universally hated, gave up that line of work and bought himself into the judgeship just about the same time the widow Kuick settled down in Paradise. That was the end of whatever claim Jed McGarrity had to a quiet life.

  If the widow wasn’t writing to Johnstown about property lines or timber or some other trespass she dreamed up in the night she was spying on folks from her window and making trouble. Up to now it had never been anything very serious, at least nothing Jed had to bring to the attention of the real law. As Sam Beck had told the widow to her face when she complained to him about one of the Cameron boys’ more raucous benders, if the New-York courts started prosecuting fornicators and drunkards the very first thing they’d have to do was to throw all the judges in gaol.

  As much as Jed wanted to believe that this newest complaint would go the way of the others, he was uneasy in his bones. The widow had Jemima Southern egging her on, and in his mind the two of them together were worse than all the hounds of hell. On top of that he couldn’t ignore what they had to say, for the simple fact that at least one crime had been committed. The strongbox was gone, and so was the overseer. Ever since word had come that O’Brien was on his way, Jed had lain awake nights wondering how in the hell the two Kuick widows were planning to hang those crimes on Hannah Bonner, but no matter how many times he and Anna talked it through they came up empty.

  On top of all that, word had got out about the inquest and pretty much all of Paradise had crowded into the church. Charlie LeBlanc wasn’t here but Molly’s folks were, he was surprised to see. Nicholas Wilde, looking as wobbly as a man could look and still walk upright, holding on to Dolly Smythe’s arm for all the world. Even the doctor had left a house in mourning to come sit up front across from the Kuicks.

  Baldy O’Brien was standing there in a full bluster, pleased as pie to have a real audience for once. He had hooked his thumbs in the band of his breeches while he walked up and down and nodded to folks, like he was an old Dutch patroon who had called all his tenants in to read them a long-overdue sermon.

  Then all the Bonner’s came in. Elizabeth was as pale as new snow but to look at the men a person might think they had come to hear a musicale. Hawkeye touched his brow in greeting and smiled when Axel Metzler called a question after him. Nathaniel met Jed’s eye and nodded. The Mohawks hung back near the door, the big Seneca who had been courting Hannah with them. It would make some folks here jumpy to see them standing there but Jed was glad of the backup, should the need arise.

  Then Hannah came in last, and even the children went quiet. Not out of fear or worry or bad feelings of any kind, but just because Hannah Bonner in the gold light of eventide would rob anybody of words. And in spite of the reason she was here and the fact Baldy O’Brien was looking at her with his mouth curled, Hannah seemed as easy and happy as ever she was, talking to folks as she went up the aisle and smiling.

  Jemima Kuick turned her head to watch her and gooseflesh ran up Jed’s back at the look on her face. For no good reason he could name she reminded him just then of Jamie McGregor, dead some years now. He had been a veteran of King George’s war and spent the rest of his days talking about who still needed killing, and how pleased he’d be to do the honors.

  When the Bonner’s were settled, Hannah with her father to one side and her grandfather to the other and the rest of the family close alongside, O’Brien cleared his throat and raised his voice.

  “I’m going to read out this complaint in parts because there are two different charges here.” He bellowed so loud that the few folks who hadn’t made it to the church were likely to hear him anyway.

  “Anybody interrupts me or makes trouble I’ll ask the constable here to throw them out. When I’m done I’ll be asking some questions of the complainants—that’s Missus Kuick sitting there. Then I’ll question the defendant.” He cleared his throat, rattled the piece of paper in his hand, and held it at arm’s length.

  “‘For some months or perhaps longer, Hannah Bonner of this village, a half-breed woman eighteen years of age, has been involved in the illegal traffic of runaways, whereby slaves from the cities to the South are encouraged and helped to run from their rightful owners. Hannah Bonner’s part in this conspiracy is to guide them into the woods, where they are met by her Mohawk relatives and taken north to Canada, where they may pose as free blacks and evade justice.

  “‘Witness to all this is one Liam Kirby of Manhattan, who tracked the runaway onto Bonner lands but was obstructed by Hannah Bonner in his pursuit. Further, when a certain Ambrose Dye, employed at our mill, took steps to stop this lawlessness, Hannah Bonner used deceit and lies to rouse our slaves into a state of savage anger against Mr. Dye. The slaves, together with Hannah Bonner and other members of her Mohawk family, contrived to have Mr. Dye abducted. We believe, as our husband and son believed, that our slaves, together with Hannah Bonner, were responsible for the overseer’s death.

  “‘During the abduction of Mr. Dye, our persons were taken prisoner by the Mohawk and the house was ransacked. A strongbox containing a great deal of money was taken by the Indian abductors, no doubt to finance further illegal activities.’”

  O’Brien looked up from the paper into a crowd of almost a hundred people, and every face blank with shock. Jed himself was shaking, wondering if his hearing could be playing tricks on him and if he had heard right and the Kuick women had really accused Hannah Bonner of everything from slave running to murder, wondering why neither Nathaniel nor Hawkeye had got up yet when he himself had to fight the urge to walk up to O’Brien and punch him right in the face.

  The judge had started to lose some of his self-satisfied look, maybe because he was as surprised at the reaction he was seeing as Jed was. He cleared his throat. “This first set of charges are slave running, theft, assault, and conspiracy to murder. Now the second set of charges—”

  A voice rose up from a shadowy corner at the back of the church. “Before you move on, Judge O’Brien, I’d like to speak to those first charges.”

  Every head in the church swiveled toward the voice as Liam Kirby stepped forward into a shaft o
f light. A woman’s strangled cry cut through the murmuring: Jemima Southern, the last woman on earth Jed would have thought capable of fainting, had come to her feet and stood there swaying.

  “Who is that?” blustered O’Brien. “Who are you, sir, to interrupt these proceedings?”

  “You’ve got a church full of folks who can tell you my name. I’m the Liam Kirby the Kuicks name as a witness in that complaint you’ve got in your hand.”

  O’Brien could have looked no more surprised if Liam Kirby had called himself Tom Jefferson. “Mr. Kirby, I understood you to be in the city.”

  “Don’t know where you’d get that idea. Unless it’s from the same people who told you that pack of lies you just read out.”

  Jemima Southern sat down hard and leaned forward like a woman ready to spill her supper all over her shoes.

  Liam Kirby.

  The very last person Hannah expected or wanted to see, and there he stood with his cap in his hands as if he belonged. As if he had never been away. Just behind him Strong-Words and Strikes-the-Sky stood near the open door, both of them with their rifles in their hands. There was a rushing in Hannah’s ears but she pinched the web of flesh between thumb and finger until her vision cleared and she could hear again.

  O’Brien’s face was blotched with color, and he fairly danced in place in his agitation.

  “Explain yourself, sir.”

  Liam stepped forward, and looked around himself. Hannah felt her father’s hand on her shoulder and she leaned against him.

  Liam said, “If there was any slave running going on in Paradise I couldn’t find any trace of it, on Hidden Wolf or anywhere else. I cain’t deny that I came here tracking a runaway, and it may even be true that the woman I was after passed through the village. My dogs thought she did. I never did pick up her trail again, but it wasn’t Hannah Bonner who stopped me.”

  The widow rose to her feet as if she were being pulled up by strings, jerking and trembling. Her color was very bad, and her eyes so bloodshot that the part of Hannah that was a doctor first and would always be a doctor imagined the nest of veins and arteries that throbbed deep in the cradle of her skull.