Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  “Yes,” she said, turning the paper away from his curious gaze.

  “Good news or bad?”

  Lily gave him a pointed look. “I won't know until I've read it,” she said and he turned away, affronted but trying not to show it.

  Within a few sentences the shock of what her mother had to report had settled deep in Lily's bones: Dolly Wilde was dead, and had been—Lily struggled to count the days—for more than a month.

  . . . at first we believed them all, mother, father, and child as well as both the Fiddlers, to have been the victims of some unthinkable and inexplicable act of robbery or retribution or kidnapping, but I must put your mind at ease straightaway: Nicholas had gone to Johnstown some days before the incident, in order to take care of some business with the county, and he took with him Callie and Zeke. Dolly's condition made travel impossible, and so Cookie stayed behind with her.

  Just when we were almost resigned to the idea that all five of them were dead, the three travelers returned. In truth, we were very relieved to see them, not only because we feared the worst, but also because the suspicion entertained by some—though most assuredly not by me—that Nicholas or Zeke might have been responsible for Dolly's death could be set aside.

  There was an inquiry in the trading post in which the known facts were laid out for all to hear. They are few and insufficient, so that no reasonable person can draw even a preliminary conclusion. Two days before your father found Dolly half-frozen on Hidden Wolf, Cookie came to the trading post for a pound of lard and a half pound of salt, and with her came Dolly. Anna McGarrity, who served them at the counter, reported that Dolly seemed fevered and started easily, but that has been the case with her for so long that Anna took no special note. Cookie said nothing of the trip to Johnstown, but again that fact was not alarming in itself. You will remember that Cookie is not a talkative person, and rarely volunteers information if not asked directly.

  Constable McGarrity is in the unfortunate position of having neither clues, nor hope of any, though speculation is rife in the village. Some believe that Dolly finally lost the last of her reason and attacked Cookie and then wandered away in confusion or fear or both. The proponents of this theory believe that Cookie's body won't be discovered until the warmer weather comes and with it the thaw. Others of lesser understanding suppose that Cookie led a troublesome mistress onto the mountain to abandon her there and lost her way home in a storm called up by a vengeful and quick Almighty; still others that a stranger—for what man among us would do such a thing?—came upon them and took advantage of two women without means of protecting themselves.

  Not one of these possibilities—for they must at least be taken into consideration, no matter how unlikely they may seem—has any basis in observable fact. Only Zeke entertains any real hope that his mother might still be found alive, and in fact he came to me just last week to ask if I would write down an advertisement to be placed in the Johnstown and Albany papers, in his own words, which I give you here:

  Good woman gone missing. Mrs. Cookie Fiddler, a free woman of color, resident in Paradise on the Sacandaga. About sixty years, medium complexion the color of milky coffee. Last seen she was wearing a brown blanket coat, a yellow head wrap sprigged with greenery, and sturdy boots. Reward for information on her whereabouts or the fate that took her from us. God keep and protect my mother. Send word to Zeke Fiddler, care of McGarrity's Trading Post in Paradise.

  For my part, I must think that some third party was involved, but to what end, that I cannot imagine. For now Constable McGarrity has written his official report of death by misadventure.

  In the two weeks since this sad affair, I have seen Nicholas Wilde twice: once when he came to claim his wife's mortal remains, and once in the village. He was and is as distressed as any loving and attentive husband must be by a good wife's unhappy and violent end.

  The neighbors have taken it upon themselves to help Nicholas in whatever way they might, bringing him a few birds or a measure of milk or a pie. I am told that Jemima Kuick comes to the orchard house every second day to clean and cook. Callie has not spoken a word, it is said, since she saw her mother's poor body, and she spends all of her time with Martha Kuick and will not be separated from her. An invitation from Curiosity to spend the rest of the winter at the Todds', and a similar invitation from us to come to Lake in the Clouds, were politely refused. My heart goes out to poor Callie, for I know what it is to lose a mother at such a tender age.

  The words blurred on the page, and still Lily did not realize that she was weeping until she felt Simon's hand on her arm. She looked up into his face and saw concern there, and curiosity too, though he would never give it voice. Around the room the others had gone silent.

  “A friend,” she said, her voice breaking with the effort to be as calm as she wanted to be. “At home a friend of mine has died. She was lost in a storm.”

  A burst of laughter tried to force itself up into her throat from deep in her belly. How very inappropriate, her mother would say and at that Lily really did let out a hiccup of a laugh, one that might have been taken for a sob, had been taken for a sob by Simon, who settled down next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.

  As if she were his to comfort.

  The neighbors have taken it upon themselves to help Nicholas in whatever way they might.

  Lily stood up suddenly. “I need fresh air,” she said, holding the letter against her breast. Simon was looking at her, but she would not meet his eye. “Just a few minutes of fresh air, alone.”

  Chapter 12

  December, Paradise

  One of the mysteries of the young United States that Jennet could not sort out to her own satisfaction was the matter of holidays. It seemed that Americans worked every day but the Sabbath, and were loath to give up that habit, even to celebrate, no matter what the reason.

  “Why, that's not entirely true,” Elizabeth said when Jennet presented her observations. “You saw that we celebrate Thanksgiving, did you not? And in the summer Independence Day is very important. Then there are the celebrations around Christmas.”

  This took Jennet by surprise. “You celebrate Christmas?”

  Elizabeth seemed a little embarrassed to admit such a thing. “Really, it is more a matter of going along with the Dutch,” she said. “There are so many of them here, you realize, and they have particular ways of celebrating. Hannah can tell you about it, or better yet, ask Gabriel and Annie.”

  Soon after, on a snowy afternoon when Annie and Gabriel and Leo Hench were playing with Blue's new puppies before the hearth, Jennet raised the subject again.

  “You mean Saint Claas?” Leo asked, his brow creased with excitement. “Why, he's a Dutch saint, come over on a ship, I suppose, just like the others.” To this he added, very thoughtfully: “Nobody ever has told me what a saint is, not so as I understand it.”

  Annie gave him a look that was evenly divided between tolerance and irritation.

  “The important part,” she said with a superior air, “is that Claas comes to Paradise on the sixtieth of December, every year.”

  “The sixth of December,” Gabriel corrected Annie, giggling as a puppy clambered up his arm to lick his face. “There's no sixty days in December.”

  “He's a tall man with dark eyes,” Leo went on, ignoring the smoldering argument.

  “And a wild beard,” Annie said. “The grown-ups take special note of his beard, 'cause it grows all over his face. Like a dog, except yellow as corn silk.”

  Elizabeth was at the far end of the room sorting through some clothing, but Jennet heard her muffle a surprised laugh. The children were too wound up in their story—and puppies—to take note.

  Gabriel pursed his mouth in disgust. “What's important is, Claas carries good things in his pocket.”

  “Only in one pocket,” Annie corrected in turn. “In the other pocket he's got a bundle of birch rods as thick as my father's thumb. For the children who don't deserve sweets.”

  A
t this she sent a pointed look at both Leo and Gabriel, who were stacking puppies like wood chips, one atop the next.

  “And he comes to the door?” Jennet asked Gabriel.

  “Oh no,” he said. “Well, at least not when children are about. He comes in the night, you see. The Dutch children in the village hang their stockings up, and old Claas, he comes by and fills those stockings up while they're all asleep.”

  “Ah,” Jennet said. “And what about your stockings? Does he fill them too?”

  Annie laughed out loud. “We ain't Dutch,” she said. “You know that.”

  “But he comes to call anyway,” said Gabriel. “While we're sleeping. We don't hang up stockings but he leaves the sugar cakes on the table. Last year we got an orange too, each of us.”

  Leo nodded eagerly. “Juice sweet as sin,” he said, and again a muffled laugh came from Elizabeth.

  The rest of the conversation had to do with what Claas might bring this year, and if any of them had earned a birch rod instead of an orange.

  But in the end all the anticipation was for naught: a three-day blizzard kept Jed McGarrity from making his scheduled trip to get supplies from Johnstown, and coincidentally, Saint Claas stayed away from Paradise. The children were disappointed, but stoic. On the sixth of December they went off to bed consoling each other and trying to calculate how long the snow would keep the old Dutch saint away.

  The wind and snow scoured the walls of the cabin, but in front of the hearth it was warm and Jennet had to keep herself from yawning.

  “It seems rather hard,” she said. “That the children should look forward to this all year and be let down.”

  Nathaniel winked at her. “Have a little faith,” he said. “The snow might have slowed Claas down, but he'll get here in the end. One year he didn't come till January, as I remember it.”

  Hannah was bent over some sewing, working by the light of a pine knot. She said, “For the Todds' sake I hope the weather clears before that.”

  At this they all went quiet. After a while Hannah looked up, her expression blank. “What?”

  “Are you saying that Richard is waiting to die until after Saint Claas comes to call?” Elizabeth asked.

  “No,” said Hannah with a grim smile. “But he will have his Christmas celebration first, and his firecrackers and all the rest of it. He has told me as much.”

  Nathaniel shrugged one shoulder, running a hand over his face. “Stubborn unto death,” he said.

  “Did you expect anything else?” Elizabeth asked.

  She began to put her knitting away, a deep frown between her brows.

  “Is that possible?” Jennet asked. “To just will yourself alive when your body is ready to die?”

  “In Richard's case I wouldn't doubt it,” said Nathaniel.

  To Jennet it was clear that there were stories here that she had yet to hear, and also that this was not the time to ask. Instead she said, “As soon as the storm breaks I'll go down to spend a few days with Curiosity and help with the nursing.”

  This earned her a brilliant smile from Elizabeth and a thankful one from Hannah. Nathaniel put his hand on Jennet's shoulder as he passed, and squeezed.

  “Claas will have to come on Christmas Eve,” Anna McGarrity told Jennet when she stopped in at the trading post on the way to the Todds' place two days later.

  “Fearful late,” said Jed, who was fishing among the pickled eggs in a large jar. “But better than no visit at all. And we can get all the foolery done with at once.”

  “Foolery?” Jennet asked, looking from Anna to Jed, who was nailing a new hand-painted sign among the great variety of them on the wall: No More Cone Shugar. “Do you mean the firecrackers?”

  “And the rest of it,” said Anna. “Firecrackers and a turkey shoot, that's something we do every year. Wait and see if it don't cheer even the saddest folks right up.”

  Anna was thinking of the Wilde family, no doubt, and Jennet must think of them, too, for the half hour it took for her to walk from the trading post to the Todd place. Certainly anything they could do to help the Wildes must be undertaken. Indeed, all of Paradise needed something to take its mind off the mystery that still surrounded Dolly's death and Cookie's disappearance.

  When she turned on the path that led up through tall stands of evergreens to the Todd property she saw Joshua Hench coming toward her. The blacksmith was driving a small bobsled, standing on a board set over one end. His son Emmanuel sat behind him, holding on by means of a leather strap nailed to the floorboards.

  Joshua drew the horse to a stop and touched the brim of his hat. Emmanuel jumped up like a puppet and they both smiled at her, identical strong, wide smiles that no one could withstand for their honesty and simple goodwill.

  “Why, Miz Jennet,” Joshua said. “I was just thinking about you today. The Lake in the Clouds folks all come through the blizzard?”

  “Everyone healthy and accounted for,” Jennet assured him. “And you are all well?”

  “Daisy got a catarrh,” Joshua said. “I was hoping Hannah might have time to come see. Don't want to bother Curiosity about such a little thing right now.”

  “Yes,” Jennet said. “Curiosity is very busy with Dr. Todd.”

  “That's true,” Emmanuel said. “He sure do keep everybody jumping, my grandma most especially.”

  Joshua sent his son a quiet look that made the boy drop his head and study his own shoes.

  “Emmanuel been helping me get the firecrackers ready for the Christmas Eve party,” Joshua said evenly. “He's got a good steady hand, but his mouth do get away from him, time to time.”

  “Why, I have that very same problem,” Jennet said. “I sympathize with young Emmanuel. But let me ask you—just out of curiosity—I suppose all these preparations mean that you haven't had time to work on my skate blades.”

  “Now, I wouldn't go that far.” Joshua rubbed a spot on his chin. “Why don't you stop by the smithy tomorrow, see what I got for you.” And with that he spoke a few soft words to the horse and they were off again.

  “I'll ask Hannah to stop by to look at Daisy's throat when she comes down later today!” Jennet called after him, and he raised a hand.

  She found Curiosity and both her granddaughters in the kitchen. Lucy was up to her elbows in soap and water, scrubbing the plank table that dominated the middle of the room, while Sally tended a pot of beans and bacon hanging from a trivet over the fire. The smells of lye soap and cooking were strongest, but just underneath was the sweet-sharp smell of the herbs that went into the tisanes and teas that Curiosity cooked, day and night, for Dr. Todd. Just below those smells were the more usual ones: wax candles, hot milk, wet wool, and wood smoke, always and forever. If she went back to Scotland tomorrow and never came to this country again, Jennet knew that wood smoke would immediately bring Paradise to mind.

  Curiosity herself was sitting in front of the hearth in her rocker, asleep with her knitting in her lap. In repose, her bright eyes closed to the world, she looked her age and more, and bone weary. Sally held a finger to her lips and Jennet nodded, slipping off her pattens to walk in her stocking feet across the room.

  “Child, you think you can hide from me in my own kitchen?”

  All three of them jumped, Jennet most of all.

  “I can try,” Jennet said. “Hope lives eternal, as they say.”

  Curiosity let out her low chuckle and raised her arms over her head to stretch. “I know every creak of these boards,” she said on a yawn.

  “Grandmama was up all night with the doctor,” said Lucy. “We was hoping she'd get a few hours at least this afternoon.”

  “Catch as catch can,” said Curiosity. She held out an arm toward Jennet, palm up, and curled her long fingers. “Come on over here, girl, and give me news from the mountain.”

  Jennet settled on a three-cornered stool just in front of Curiosity, whose eyes were bloodshot but sharp as ever. For five minutes she told everything she could think to say, from what books Elizab
eth had been reading to them in the evenings to this morning's visit to the trading post and the plans to delay the visit of Saint Claas until later in the month.

  Curiosity smiled at that. “Those children will be hopping out of they skin with waiting.”

  “Yes, they already are. But it's not so very long.”

  After a moment of looking into the fire Curiosity said, “I should get back upstairs and see to Richard. Ethan been with him since sunrise.” And then, with a quick look at Jennet: “Is Hannah on her way down here too?”

  Hannah had been so distracted lately, so withdrawn, that Jennet hesitated to say with any certainty at all what she might do. “She is supposed to look in on the widow, tomorrow at the latest.”

  Curiosity was looking at her sharply, but after a moment her gaze flickered away. As if she realized the questions she wanted to ask had no good or satisfying answers.

  Jennet said, “How is the doctor?”

  Curiosity shrugged. “No better. Some worse, I suppose. He passed a tolerable night and this morning he asked for tea. I expect he'll hold on a while longer.”

  “Hannah thinks he is waiting to see the Christmas firecrackers before he dies.”

  Too late Jennet saw Lucy's expression of alarm and warning; the words were spoke, and she might have pinched Curiosity for the reaction she got. The old lady's face contorted, and a bright blaze of anger came into her eyes.

  “Don't talk to me about no firecrackers,” she said. “I'd like to throw every one of them in the lake, and Richard Todd right after. Burning up Lord knows what just to hear the bang and watch the sizzle. As if we ain't had enough fire in Paradise.”

  She set the chair to rocking hard and the old tomcat moved away in alarm.

  “Grandmama,” said Lucy in a consoling tone.