Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  Then he got up from the table and went to the cot farthest from the fire, where he lay down and, just that simply, went to sleep.

  For three days it went just like that: a long day in the sleigh, a few hours in a strange cabin, and then they went to their separate beds. When they did speak—of food or firewood or other matters that could not be ignored—the tone was pleasant and unremarkable. On the second night Simon examined the pistol that Luke had given Lily. It was only twelve inches long, and it fit her hand neatly.

  “An officer's pistol,” she said. “From all the engraving and scrollwork.”

  “Your brother thinks a great deal of your marksmanship,” Simon said. “For you'll have to aim true to do any damage with this. But I'll keep it primed and loaded, nonetheless.”

  “It's true I'm not as good a shot as my father or brother, but I had good teachers,” Lily said. She heard the defensive note in her own voice, and wished it away.

  “It was the pistol I was doubting,” said Simon. “Not you, lass.” He leaned over and kissed her, a quick stamp of the mouth that was over before she could register surprise.

  Lily could not call herself dissatisfied or unhappy, not exactly. Simon was everything he should be—everything her brother would want him to be—thoughtful and helpful and polite above all. It was precisely because they had run out of things to argue about, Lily reasoned to herself, that she was sleeping so much.

  She slept on strange cots, deeply and without dreams; she slept the days away in the sleigh. She could not think how to start a conversation, and so she slept. Sometimes the reasonable part of herself wondered why she was acting as she was, what exactly she meant to prove by holding back this way, but she was too sleepy to pursue such complicated questions and so she didn't; she pulled the furs over her head and let herself drift away again.

  For Simon's part, he seemed vaguely amused by everything, not in an ill humor or any humor at all.

  Then on the third day, as she made yet another strange cabin comfortable for the night, it came to Lily that Simon Ballentyne was a great deal like her father, in at least one way. He had the gift of patience, a word far too simple to really convey the quality. It was the thing that made the difference between a man who learned to hunt and one born to hunt. Her father had it and her grandfather and brothers and her uncle Runs-from-Bears and his sons. Men who could wait with utter calm because they understood their prey as it did not understand itself, knew what it was thinking and feeling and what it needed, most of all.

  Simon Ballentyne was like her father in this one, crucial way, and Nicholas Wilde was not, and never could be.

  It was that thought that woke Lily out of her long sleep, once and for all, on the night that the blizzard started. On the heels of that thought came another one: her courses were late. Just two days late, but late nonetheless when she could never remember, even once, when her bleeding had failed to start with the full moon.

  They were sitting at supper when this realization came to her. Lily looked at Simon, who had already started the evening ritual of looking after his weapons. Today he had shot a turkey and they had eaten fresh meat for the first time since Montreal.

  Lily looked at him and saw that a perfect line of three pin feathers had settled along one straight black brow and it struck Lily fast and hard: it was the funniest thing she had ever seen.

  At first it was just a hiccup of laughter, coming up from her belly, but soon she could hardly contain herself; she leaned forward to put her forehead on the table and her shoulders shook and shook with the force of it. She laughed until the tears came and laughed more, raised her head to try to explain and saw the feathers buckle and dance as he drew his brows together, fixed as surely as quills sewn to leather. She pointed, weak with laughter.

  Simon touched a finger to his brow, pulled away the pin feathers and looked at them with a blank expression while Lily laughed on and on and tears ran down her face to plop onto the table, great fat drops like rain. Then Simon was up and pulling her up too, holding her against his chest while she laughed and cried and tried to talk, all at once. He held her very close, his arms around her so that she could let herself go limp and not be afraid of falling, and Lily remembered suddenly and without warning her mother bent over Gabriel when he was just a few days old, Gabriel bawling like a calf, red faced and furious, his toothless mouth open to tell the world that he did not like the order of things, not one bit. And Lily's mother talking to him, calmly, reasonably, while she folded a blanket up and across and across again and then flipped him neatly, binding him toe to head, so firmly that he couldn't kick or wave his arms or fight, and just that simply he stopped, closed his mouth with an audible click and looked up at her, his mother, their mother, and all was right with his world because he was caught, well and truly in the web she had made for him, and the comfort of that was absolute.

  Against her ear Simon Ballentyne said, “Ach, Lily my love. You've got the heart of a lion, lass, but you must learn to bend or you will break.”

  They stood like that for a long time until her breathing had righted itself, the shuddering lessening until she could hear the beat of her own heart and his, the fire whispering to itself, the wind in the trees around them, purposeful and growing louder.

  Lily let herself be led to the single cot, she let Simon tuck her in and kiss her cheek. She watched him wipe the table and heat water and get out his razor and set about shaving, something he hadn't done since they left Montreal. He scraped the bristle from his cheeks and chin and throat carefully, working without a mirror, using his fingertips to tell him what he needed to know.

  Then he came to her and sat on the floor on the furs and blankets he had put down for himself. That way he could look at her directly, his face so close that she could smell the soap still on his skin.

  “Sleep,” he told her. “Go to sleep now, lass, and I'll keep watch.”

  When she woke, finally, thirsty beyond memory, the skin of her face tight with dried tears, it was to the howling of the blizzard. The only light in the world came from the banked fire, a few pulsing coals. Lily sat up and tried to remember where the water bucket might be.

  “I'll fetch you a cup,” Simon said in the darkness beside her, and she started at the sound of his voice, so close, and then settled back and waited while he stirred the fire and moved through the near dark. Then he pressed the cup into her hands and she drank greedily, icy clear water that was the best thing she could ever remember tasting.

  “What time is it?” she asked finally, pressing the cup to her cheek.

  “Past dawn,” he said. “But you needn't rouse yourself. We can't travel in this storm.” He sent her a glance over his shoulder. “I'll go see to the horses.”

  It was his way of giving her some privacy, and Lily was glad of it. When he was gone she drew out a cracked chamber pot from its spot beneath the cot and laughed out loud to find that it had been painted, not with flowers or vines, but with the likeness of old King George.

  The mad king had no good news for her: her courses had not started, and now she was too awake to put that thought conveniently out of mind. While she washed in the last of the water and shook out her clothes and brushed her hair, she thought of that simple lack of blood and tried to reconcile herself to what it most probably meant, until Simon came in and suggested a game of cards.

  They played through the morning, talking a little of unimportant things and drinking cup after cup of strong tea laced with sugar, a going-away gift from Ghislaine, who had been worried about the lack of comforts during such a long and difficult journey. When they tired of cards Simon lit a candle and Lily read to him, first from Poor Richard's Almanac, a little book she had taken with her to Canada out of sentimentality, and finally from one of the newspapers her mother had sent, not from the essays or war reports but the advertisements.

  “Oh, look,” Lily said. “Poor Mr. Mather, his wife has run off again.”

  Simon sat straight up and looked at her. “You
know this Mather?”

  “Not really,” Lily said. “Except through the advertisements he puts in the paper, just about every year at this time.” She read: “‘Hereby be it known that Margaret Mather, lawful wife of the subscriber, has eloped from a faithful and good husband. She took with her a half-dozen silver spoons as well as the subscriber's best coat with pewter buttons. A reward will be paid for return of the silver and coat, but a husband so oft maligned is glad to be free. This time he will not allow the wanton back into his home. He will pay no debts of her contracting. Jonah Mather, Butcher. Boston Post Road.'”

  Simon frowned at Lily as though she had made the whole thing up. “You mean to say this isn't the first time the man has put such a thing in the paper?”

  “I'm afraid not,” Lily said. “She seems to leave him at least once a year, and he always claims he will not take her back again. But it looks as though she does come back, and he does take her in, and then in the deep of winter, she goes again.”

  Simon grunted. “The more fool him, to put up with it. Has the man no pride?”

  “What he has, I suppose, is hope.” Lily put down the paper. “What would you have him do when she comes back? Turn her out to starve?”

  “I wouldn't be waiting for her,” Simon said, putting both hands flat on the table and leaning toward her a little, as if he were speaking a language she only understood imperfectly. “She would come back to find me gone, for I'll let no one make a fool of me twice.”

  There was a moment's silence between them, awkward and uneasy, filled with the howling of the storm.

  “My mother says that love makes a fool of everyone.”

  If Lily could have reached out and caught up those words out of the air, she would have done it. But they were said, and they had done their mischief. Across the table from her Simon Ballentyne's expression had gone very still, but his eyes were sharp with anger. He got up so suddenly that the table rocked on its legs.

  “I'm off to look after the horses.” In a moment he was gone, the door shutting firmly behind him.

  She had hurt his feelings, or his pride. Or both, Lily told herself, because of course she had reminded him of what might be ahead. She was not his, not really; she might never be. Most of the time he kept his uncertainty and hopes to himself, but they were there, just under the surface. Like a careless child with a stick, she had poked too hard and exposed what he was determined to keep to himself.

  For their supper they ate turkey stew with the last of the bread and some cheese. The silence was heavier now, fraught with things that Lily wanted to say, but could not. How could she apologize for the truth? And yet she wanted to, because she did not like to see him unhappy. An odd pair they made, the two of them, each with tender secrets that could not stay hidden for long. Lily turned her face away from him when these thoughts came, lest he should see for himself what she would not say.

  Simon did not tuck her in or kiss her cheek, and Lily was first surprised and then hurt and then angry at herself; she could not have things both ways after all. If she wanted . . . what? What was it she wanted from him? She turned over and tried again to sleep, without success.

  It was the noise of her own thoughts that kept her awake, louder than the storm and just as relentless. On the floor beside the cot Simon was a great mountain of furs, absolutely still. In the dim she watched for the telltale white of his breath in the chill room, and decided in the end that he must have turned his face downward. Surely that was it; if she watched long enough he would shift in his sleep and then she could see that he was breathing. He was a healthy man in his prime, after all. He could not simply leave her here alone, no matter how angry he was at her.

  She coughed into her fist to relieve the tickle in her throat, once and then again. Leaned over the mountain that must be Simon and coughed again.

  He sat up so suddenly that their heads knocked, hard, and Lily fell from the cot, all flailing arms and legs, keening with surprise and embarrassment and pain too.

  “What!” Simon half shouted. “What!”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and peered at her face and Lily realized first, that he was not completely awake nor was he asleep, and second, that she had put herself in a terrible position, for how was she ever to explain this?

  Simon blinked at her and touched his own forehead where a bump must surely rise, and fell back into the confusion of furs.

  “Christ, Lily,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You'll be the death of me. What do you mean by barking at me like that?”

  “You weren't breathing,” she said. To her own ears she sounded more silly than defiant, and to his, too, for he sat up again and glared at her, his face painted red by the glow of coals from the hearth.

  “I wasn't breathing?”

  “You—you didn't seem to be.” She tried to get up and was defeated by the tangle of covers. Yanked at them furiously, near tears and angry with herself and mortified beyond all experience.

  “I was worried,” she said, and then she dared to cast a glance at him, only to find that he was smiling.

  “Lily Bonner,” he said. “Every night I've waited for you to ask me to share your bed. A simple word would have been enough. No need to bang me in the head first.”

  By the time he had finished she was sputtering in anger, unable to find a curse hard enough to throw in his face. She would have cuffed him instead, if she had been able to find her hands, and so she settled for howling, putting back her head and howling to the rafters, which only made him laugh harder.

  He reached to help her and she elbowed him as hard as she could, not hard enough to stop him laughing or even to stop his clever hands, moving fast and sure, and then she was free, her hair swirling around her head.

  For just a moment she drew in breath, her chest heaving, and then she reached down deep to summon the memory of her mother in a temper, that look of hers that made the world tremble. Lily gave that very look to Simon Ballentyne.

  Who grinned at her, and brushed the hair away from her face.

  “Come, hen,” he said, catching her hand to bring her closer. “Come lay your head.”

  “I will not,” she said. “I was not—not—”

  “Of course not. It was gey wicked of me to say such a thing.” He crooned to her, soft and softer still. “I'm sorry I laughed, truly I am. Come, catch your breath. Breathe easy, love.”

  “You—” she began. “You're—”

  “Hopeless, aye, it's true.” Somehow she was lying beside him and he was bent over her, supporting himself on his arm. “A witless man. A fool in love.”

  He kissed her then, softly and sweetly and with devastating effectiveness. His beard had already begun again and his cheeks were rough to the touch and cool, and in response something small and warm ignited deep in Lily's belly, something strange and oddly familiar at the same time.

  “Will ye gang back tae your bed?” He was whispering against her neck, his mouth moving against the tender skin below her ear so that her flesh rose and shivered.

  “Or will ye bide?” That damnable question she had hoped never to have to answer again. So she turned her head to touch his mouth with her own: an invitation, a demand, a plea for rescue from the decision he was pressing on her.

  He pulled back to look at her. “Lily.”

  “What?” She pushed out a great sigh. “What do you want me to say?” And bit her lip until it hurt, for she already knew what he wanted but now she must listen to him tell her.

  He pursed his mouth in mock thoughtfulness and then rolled over to lie on his back, his hands behind his head.

  “Repeat after me,” he began.

  “Oh, no.” Lily pressed her face into the covers.

  “‘Simon, please let me bide here with you, for I have no wish to go back to my lonely bed.'”

  Lily summoned all the self-control she had. “I will not say that.”

  “Good night, then.”

  She sat up. “You are infuriating.”

  �
�You only need say what you want, lass.”

  “I don't know what I want.”

  He blinked at her and said nothing.

  Lily turned her face away. “I'm afraid.”

  He put a hand over hers, ran it up her arm. “Afraid of me, Lily?”

  “No. No, I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of—”

  Too many things to name, but the images were bright in her mind; blinding in their clarity.

  “Getting with child,” he supplied for her and those words hit her as surely as a fist. When she opened her eyes he was looking at her with surprise, and unease, and dawning understanding.

  “It's like that, is it?” he said softly, his hand closing more firmly around hers.

  She turned her head away, or tried to, but he would have none of that. He caught her chin and studied her face, his expression keen and sharp, as if he were looking at something he had never seen before, and Lily supposed that that much was true: she was carrying his child, after all. She drew in a hiccupping breath.

  “Ach, Lily.” He drew her down until her head was nested on his shoulder and closed his arms around her.

  After a while he said, “You may not care to believe me, but I would not have had it happen so quick.”

  She did believe him, and it did help, but she could not make herself say that out loud.

  “And still, there's one thing to be thankful for,” Simon said more softly, his fingers tracing a pattern on the skin of her throat.

  He was thinking of her father, no doubt, that he would not object to the marriage if she was carrying Ballentyne's child. Lily was just about to explain that her father might very well object when the warmth of Simon's breath distracted her.

  He had shifted a little so that they were face to face. “If you've fallen pregnant already, why, the deed is done. We needn't worry about it happening, lass, for it already has.”

  She found herself almost smiling, which would not do, not at all. “Trust a man to see it that way.”