Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  The rest was done in short order, for it was simple enough: what remained of Richard's money and land—a fortune larger than anyone in the village had ever imagined—was now Ethan's.

  Except, of course, that there was a condition.

  Now, thought Nathaniel, settling forward and planting his elbows on his knees. Now we come to it.

  The lawyer explained it straight-out: Richard had made his stepson a rich man, but only so long as he left Paradise to take up residence in any city of his choosing and did not return for two full years. He could have a month to ready himself for the journey, but not a day more.

  The room was very quiet when Bennett finally put down the papers. He looked like a man who had put an unavoidable and disagreeable task behind him and now must wait for the repercussions. His blue eyes seemed very large behind the small round lenses of his spectacles, moving from face to face and assessing the things he found: surprise, disquiet, anger. The last from Elizabeth, who would chafe against this bit of mischief until she was rubbed raw with it.

  Curiosity was the first to speak. “Now look at this,” she said, pushing out a low laugh. “The good doctor still tying everybody in knots just for the plain pleasure of it. Bless his surly old soul, I'ma miss him, but not as much as I'll miss you, child.”

  All eyes turned to Ethan, whose expression was very calm, almost blank.

  “You don't have to go, if you don't want to,” Elizabeth said, her voice clear and sharp. “Your mother left you enough that you can do as you please, Ethan. Mr. Bennett,” she said, turning to the lawyer. “What becomes of the bequest if Ethan doesn't comply with the terms?”

  “By law?” The lawyer ran a hand over his bright pink pate and patted it gently. “It would go to the doctor's next of kin. His brother, if he is alive and can be found. His uncle, otherwise.”

  It was then that Nathaniel realized that Bump was no longer next to him. He had slipped out of the room without a sound, and was not to be found anywhere in the house.

  The news of what was in Richard's will would explode in the village like a volley of forty-pounders, but Nathaniel wanted no part of the talk and neither did Elizabeth, it seemed, for she left with him willingly enough and kept her thoughts to herself on the way home. Which meant that a different kind of battle was to come, one he couldn't avoid.

  Not once did she add her own thoughts while Nathaniel told Many-Doves and Runs-from-Bears about Todd's will, another bad sign.

  When supper was over she sent Gabriel over to the other cabin to spend the night and even then she said nothing. While she wiped dishes and put them up, measured out beans and put them to soak, rubbed bear grease into moccasins and trimmed candlewicks, looked through schoolbooks and marked pages for the next day's lessons, through all of that she was so uncharacteristically quiet that Nathaniel could hardly sit still.

  Elizabeth in a fury was something he knew how to deal with; he could ride that storm until it wore itself out and she was ready to pull reason back around her shoulders like a warm blanket. Until then he would keep his opinions to himself.

  But this was something rarer, this quiet white anger that pinned her down and gagged her. What end it would take, even Nathaniel couldn't predict. He watched her from his spot near the hearth while he cleaned his rifle and then sharpened his knives, poured lead into bullet molds, refilled his powder horn. These were things he had done every day of his life, the movements as natural to him as breathing, and he could do them in a quiet cabin or with a battle raging around his ears. What he couldn't do, what he couldn't imagine, was what she might say when the power of speech came back to her.

  It wasn't until they had banked the fire and gone to bed that the last of his patience was spent. Lying next to Elizabeth in their marriage bed, he studied the back of her head for a while and then he said the first thing that came to mind.

  “You could go put a bullet in the man, Boots. It wouldn't do him any harm and it might make you feel better.”

  A tremor ran through her and then another and another, a tide that she was determined to hold back. And still it took her as easily as a dog took a rabbit, shook her playfully until she was limp and couldn't protect herself or run. Nathaniel let her weep, one hand on her shoulder, and tried to remember the last time he had seen her like this.

  It took him back a long way, to the summer they were first married. Trouble with Todd had driven them into the endless forests, the summer she had fought for his life and her own, fought Richard and Jack Lingo, that old devil, fought the bush and the weather and terror and her own weakness. She had faced all of that down and the strain of it had carved a hollow in her.

  Nathaniel thought of those days, oddly as clear and bright in his mind as the things he had done this very morning, and then found out she had followed him back through the years to the very same place.

  “I should have done it back then,” she said. “I should have killed him in the bush and left him to rot. Think of all the heartache it would have saved.”

  The weeping came over her again, harsh as a scouring snow. When the worst of it was over he pressed himself up against her back, draped his arm around her shoulder. He cradled her against him and stroked her hair until she slept.

  He slept too, and woke in the dead of night to find her sitting, her arms looped around her knees and her hair flowing around her shoulders like some witchy woman from one of Jennet's stories.

  She said, “I won't let Ethan go away. He is my only brother's boy, and he should be here near us, where we can keep an eye on him.”

  There were things he could say, rational things that she would not try to deny in the light of day: that Ethan was a man grown, with a mind and will of his own. That this day had been coming for a long time and they had all known it, even if they never spoke of it.

  The truth was, Ethan wanted to leave Paradise and had not known how to do that. Richard had only given his stepson what he could not bring himself to ask for. Ethan would go off to study at some college in New-York City or Boston or Philadelphia, and in two years' time, if Richard had his way, he wouldn't remember why he had ever hesitated to leave Paradise, or why he might want to come back.

  Nathaniel could say all those things that Elizabeth knew anyway, or he could leave it all and say something even truer: this had less to do with Ethan moving away than it did with their own Daniel, gone now for more weeks than either of them wanted to count, and no word for the last month.

  It was something they lived with minute by minute, each of them, and did not discuss: what it might mean, if the worst had come to pass.

  In the faint light from the window he saw her expression harden, as if he had spoken those words, and more.

  “Damn you, Nathaniel Bonner.” Her voice trembled, close to breaking. “Damn you, you're going to let Richard win. You'll see Ethan off and build the schoolhouse and let your daughter take over his practice. You're giving Richard Todd everything he ever wanted.” Her eyes flashed at him, tear-filled and furious.

  He had been holding his anger tight and small and close to him, but now it began to run like sand from a clenched fist. He swallowed hard and met her eye, saw the challenge there.

  “He never got you, did he? He never got you or Hannah, and by God, Boots, what the hell do I care for the rest of it, so long as I kept hold of what matters most?”

  She trembled and then broke like a branch in a high wind, falling toward him, back bowed, and he caught her as he always had and always would as long as he lived. He caught her up against him and rocked her, whispered soft things against her hair and touched her gently, his fingers tracing her jaw and the line of her lip and the widow's peak that carved her face into a heart.

  “He'll come home in the end,” Nathaniel said. “He will come home safe.”

  That was what she needed to hear and so he gave it to her, against his better judgment. She did not press him for names, for times and days, as she would have done as a younger woman. She was satisfied, right now, with in
the end.

  In thanks and need she pressed against him until they began to move together with subtle, quick, knowing touches, the old questions so often asked and answered. Finally she was naked in his arms, her pale skin soaking up the little bit of moonlight until it glowed, her breath rising damp and harsh in the cold room.

  He felt her thinking mind pushing its way up, trying to intrude itself between them. She made a sound, a wait sound, but he held her close and closer, held her down and kissed her until she gave up, gave in, dropped all the worries long enough to admit again what Nathaniel could never let her forget: that she belonged here with him and nowhere else, that no matter what trouble came to them they would face it together.

  In the morning Elizabeth woke to the sound of a long “halloo” echoing off the cliff walls; Nathaniel's side of the bed was empty, and Gabriel stood at the door, his cheeks red with the cold, snow in his hair: her beautiful boy. She held out her arms and he ran to her, bounced on the bed like the child he was, pushed his face into her neck and hugged her. A boy as rough as a bear cub and just as irresistible and dangerous too. She said a silent thanks that he was too young for this newest war.

  “Who's come to call this early?” she asked him, running her fingers through his hair and thinking vaguely of her brushes on the dresser; he would be gone before she could reach for them.

  “Bump.” The boy bounced away from her and off the bed, landing on his feet like a cat. “And he's brought the post, Mama. The rider came in late last night.”

  “Is there a letter from your brother? From Daniel?”

  “Maybe.” Gabriel grinned as if the idea had not occurred to him; as if he did not know how worried she had been. “Come and see.” And he ran away, shutting the door behind himself.

  She could go out just as she was, in her nightclothes, but she forced herself to dress, slowly, methodically, carefully, listening as she did to the men's voices from the other room. Runs-from-Bears said something and Bump laughed, a high, hopping laugh that would make his oversized head wobble on a spindly neck. Nathaniel had gone silent and when Elizabeth opened the door she understood why: he sat by the hearth, bent over an open letter, reading.

  Then he looked up at her and smiled. “All's well, Boots. Both the boys safe and sound and in good spirits.”

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Mr. Bump,” she said, “how kind of you to bring the post. I will make tea, shall I?”

  In the end she sent Gabriel down to the village to tell all her students that school was canceled for the day. Not so much because of the letter, though Elizabeth would gladly have read it again and again, but because of the other news that Bump brought. He was on his way to Canada to fulfill the last request Richard Todd had made of him.

  Nathaniel and Runs-from-Bears exchanged glances at this revelation.

  “It's been a while since I heard any word of Throws-Far,” said Runs-from-Bears. “But then he was making winter camp on the lakes.” He volunteered this information before Bump could ask, and Nathaniel carried on in the same way.

  “You should talk to our Hannah, she would know more.”

  “I did just that, and she gave me a name,” Bump said. “Somebody to talk to, an old Mohawk woman near Montreal. Since I'm headed that way, I thought I might as well call on Lily. Curiosity is already busy putting together a parcel. Is there anything you'd like me to take your daughter, Mrs. Bonner?”

  “Now you've done it,” Nathaniel said, grinning. “These women will load you down like a draft horse.”

  Later, Annie came to find Elizabeth while she packed things into baskets: more socks, a woolen underskirt, a beautiful pair of winter moccasins that Many-Doves had worked on for a month, a package of dates and another of dried apricots, a jug of the last of the maple syrup, a bundle of newspapers and magazines, a small pile of books.

  The little girl watched and helped where she could, and it was some while before Elizabeth noted the expression on her face.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Come, talk to me while I work.”

  Annie cast a sidelong glance in her aunt's direction. “It's about Jemima Kuick,” Annie said.

  “She is Mrs. Wilde, now,” Elizabeth reminded her.

  “Mrs. Wilde,” the girl echoed, and there was a long wait while she gathered her thoughts.

  “What about her?”

  “People say that when Baldy O'Brien comes—” Annie paused.

  “Judge O'Brien,” Elizabeth said quietly. “Or Mr. O'Brien.”

  “Mr. O'Brien,” Annie echoed again, and then said nothing more. Instead her teeth worked the soft flesh of her lower lip.

  Elizabeth closed the lid of the basket and made firm knots in the rawhide strings meant to hold it shut. She studied Annie while she did this, and saw that the girl's worry went deep.

  “Start at the beginning,” she said. “What people, and what do they say?”

  Nathaniel had come to the door and stood listening, his arms folded. Annie glanced at her favorite uncle and lost her train of thought; a scattered child, at times, but a bright one.

  She said, “Jem Ratz says we will all have to watch when they hang Nicholas and Jemima. It's the law that everybody watches. Is it true? Will we all go down to see them hang?”

  Elizabeth sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and drew the little girl closer to her. She said, “Jem Ratz may be a dab hand with a slingshot, but I despair of ever putting the empty space between his ears to good use. No, it is not true.”

  “Boots—” Nathaniel began, and she cut him off with an upraised hand.

  “If anyone should be condemned to hang—and I do not see that anyone will, if the rule of law is followed—no one will be compelled to watch. In fact, you will not be allowed to watch. No child will, if I have my way.”

  “Not even Martha and Callie?” Annie asked, in a surer voice.

  Elizabeth blanched visibly, and then the color rushed back into her face in uneven blotches. “Most especially not. Neither Martha nor Callie,” she said. “I will have a talk with Jem Ratz and make the matter clear to him too.”

  Nathaniel said, “Woe unto Jem Ratz.”

  “The very idea,” Elizabeth said. “I can hardly imagine what silliness people will begin with next.”

  “Oh, I can tell you that,” said Annie, completely at ease now. “They're saying that Jemima is a witch and that if they don't hang her they should burn her. And,” she hurried on, eager to tell all of it, “they say that Jemima spins all day, tow enough for a thousand candlewicks, but that nobody will buy any from her for she weaves a spell in with every twist of the spindle, a curse on all of us in Paradise.”

  And with that she turned and skipped away, a child who had unburdened herself to those she loved and trusted.

  With considerable disquiet of his own Nathaniel saw Elizabeth's expression and recognized it too well. His wife gearing up for yet another battle. One he feared she could not win, not if she took it into her head to protect Jemima Wilde from the entire village of Paradise.

  Chapter 17

  January 1813, Montreal

  Luke was gone to Québec on business, and the house on the rue Bonsecours had grown larger without him in it. Lily thought it would be good to be free of her brother for a little while, but before two days had passed she missed him, despite his moods or maybe, she realized, because of them. Luke gave her something to think about that wasn't Nicholas Wilde, and the letter that would not come.

  The noisy dinners around a crowded table had stopped when Luke left, and Lily was at first surprised and then hurt and then a little embarrassed to realize that the company who had joined them was less dependent on her than she had imagined. It was odd to eat alone at the big table with Iona, who did not need to fill the emptiness with talk. It was not that she was unsympathetic to Lily's loneliness, she realized, but that Iona was not one to talk unless she had something to say. Much like Lily's Kahnyen'kehàka cousins, but here in Montreal it did not suit.

  And she suspec
ted that Iona would have even less patience with Lily's confused heart than Lily had for herself. It all sounded too silly to her own ears. The Catholics, she learned from Ghislaine, believed that a person could be possessed by the devil or an evil spirit, a belief the church of Rome had in common with the Kahnyen'kehàka. To be possessed by the idea of a living man was not much different, and Lily thought sometimes of finding a priest to ask about how to be free of her thoughts.

  She thought of going home, but how would she explain herself? I have studied enough, she might say. I was homesick. Her mother would look at her face and know the truth. Lily wished she could sleep through the rest of the winter like a bear.

  Ghislaine, keen and clever enough to guess at least part of the problem, suggested that Lily go visit a black woman from the Sugar Islands who lived on the outskirts of the city. This woman could give her potions to make her forget about Nicholas Wilde and Simon Ballentyne both.

  Lily had sent Simon away, and he had gone. Without the strong words she expected. Without argument. Another thing to wonder about, what it might mean; why it was such an irritation to her to have him do what she asked him to do. Contrary creature that she was, Lily missed him, or perhaps, she admitted to herself, the things Simon had given her: sleigh rides and snow picnics and outings with people her own age.

  And kisses. She had liked kissing him, liked it so much that she felt guilty later, thinking about it. It was best that he was gone, and if she needed someone to talk to, there were her teachers, and Ghislaine, and the old lady in the bakery who was always glad to see her. And there was her work, which was distraction enough, in the daylight.