by Sara Donati
“And militia,” Lily suggested.
“Aye, militia and regulars both.”
“But you must know every man in uniform, in this part of Canada, at least.”
“I know a good many of them,” he said. “But generally it's best to keep clear of revenue agents, for they're known to be aye humorless. One with a grudge could decide to make things difficult for us. Your brother isn't without enemies, you know that.”
Of course. No one could come as far as Luke and Simon had in the world of trade without making trouble for himself. Something occurred to Lily, a question she had never thought to ask.
“Do they have cause to suspect that you're breaking the law?”
He sent her a sidelong glance. “That depends,” he said finally. “On which laws you mean.”
“Why, Canadian, I suppose,” Lily said. “At least on this side of the border. What laws concern you?”
“Your brother's,” said Simon with a grin. “And nobody else's.”
“That's a very Scottish thing to say, as if he were a laird in the old country.”
He shrugged. “Old country or new, not much changes.”
That made her think for a good while. Smuggling was an age-old problem on the border, one that had got worse with the war and the embargo; whole family fortunes had been built on it, and the greatest rivalries all seemed to come down to who traded what, and where. None of that was a secret. And still it seemed to her that there was something Simon hadn't told her, some worry that had made him go to such lengths to get them over the border without the knowledge of the authorities on either side.
“Are you spying?” she asked, and got for her trouble the harshest look he had to offer.
“Don't ever say that word,” he said. “Or even think it.”
It took some effort for him to compose his face. “I shouldn't have snapped at you, and I apologize. But that's a subject we can't discuss.”
“Maybe not right now,” Lily said, putting him on notice.
They were up to something, Simon and her brother. Lily knew that she ought to be afraid, but she could not find it in herself. They were, after all, not carrying any contraband; they were not smugglers, and whatever the men were up to, there would be no evidence of it in this sleigh; Simon was not in uniform and had never been. The border between New-York State and Canada might be a bit tricky just now, but she was Nathaniel Bonner's daughter and Hawkeye's granddaughter and allied to the Mohawk; no man who had spent any time in the endless forests would dare raise a hand to her.
Simon interrupted this conversation she was having with herself. “Recall, Lily: you must promise to let me handle the questions, should we be stopped.”
Lily bit her lip rather than say something smart that would start another argument. She was in the mood for a quarrel, but she was also enough of a woodswoman to hold her tongue in the woods.
A ruffled grouse exploded up from its cover and sent a cloud of snow into the air. Lily jumped.
“You're more nervous than you let on,” Simon said. He patted a lump in the furs that was her knee. “All will be well, lass. Hold steady.”
His words were still hanging in the air when men's voices came to them like the low rumbling of an avalanche in the distance.
“Hold steady,” Simon said again, just as the men came into sight on an old trail, a half mile to the west and headed toward them. Lily, whose eyes were as good as any sharpshooter's, studied the line for a moment: soldiers, yes, but all of them experienced backwoodsmen first.
“Voltigeurs,” she said.
“Aye,” said Simon, visibly relieved. “And Kester MacLeod has the command.”
When she was younger, Lily had dreamed of adventures like the ones her mother and grandmother had had. The stories she grew up with were brightly colored and exciting beyond words: her grandmother Cora caught up in the battle at Fort Edward, her mother running through these very woods with the terrible Jack Lingo on her heels.
And here now was her own adventure: a patrol of rough men like all the men she had grown up with. They were consummate woodsmen and good shots, and they made effective if not very obedient militiamen. They were in uniforms, of a sort: their own clothing, with bright blue sashes and regulation blanket coats, and the hats, of course, the silliest part of the whole, in her eyes.
Uniforms or not, they farted and scratched themselves without apology while their sergeant asked Simon if he had any spare tobacco, and what news was there to share from Montreal?
The platoon, it turned out, had been stationed at the Chateauguay River and was now on its way to Lacolle. The details were a little cloudy, which, of course, was intentional; they liked Simon, but would not say too much to a man out of uniform, one who was clearly headed for the border.
“And then with any luck to Nut Island,” said Lieutenant MacLeod. Behind him his men grinned.
“The garrison at Nut Island is well provisioned,” the lieutenant explained with a wink and a nudge. As if Lily wouldn't know that he was talking about women, or what these men wanted with them. She studied her mittens and hoped she looked disinterested and uninformed.
“Where are you headed tonight?” asked MacLeod. “You're not planning to bivouac with the young lady, are you?” He flashed his rotten teeth at her in such a boyish and charming way that she smiled back and regretted her surliness.
Simon had been rumbling through boxes. Now he hauled a small sack out of the back of the sleigh and offered it to Lieutenant MacLeod, who took it with a crow of delight.
“Sorry Tom's cabin is not a mile off,” he said. “We'll spend the night there.”
Even as he was saying the words, a knot of dread pulled tight deep in Lily's belly, and with good reason.
“Sorry Tom!” MacLeod put back his head and laughed, exposing rings of dirt on a neck much like a tree trunk. “I haven't thought of Sorry Tom in many a year, the old thief. By the Christ—sorry, Miss Bonner, but we've been sleeping raw for two weeks.”
Simon might have simply warned them off, but instead he looked at Lily and cocked his head. And wasn't it like him, Lily thought, to leave the hard decisions to her. She could allow them to follow along and spend an uncomfortable night, or suffer the knowledge that could have provided some comfort, and had acted selfishly.
“It's just a cabin,” she said. “But you can put your blankets on the floor and squeeze together.”
When they had started off again Simon put his arm around her and drew her close. “You've a soft heart, Lily Bonner,” he said. “And a generous one.”
She wanted to be irritated, but could not; that was Simon's special talent, to disarm her with the truth when she wanted to be difficult. She couldn't be angry at him when he flashed his dimples at her, all admiration and approval, and underneath that, not very far, the thing that kept drawing them back together. Tonight, of course, they would have chaperones. Twenty-one of them. Lily should have felt relief, she knew, but she did not.
The voltigeurs were men who had never cared much for the ways of civilized folk, but they were jovial and friendly and willing to do almost anything to entertain Lily; one of them had a fiddle, and he offered to play, later, if she would like it; another dug a chunk of maple sugar out of his pack, brushed it off on his mantle, and offered it to her.
They knew who she was, of course, and asked after her father's health and what kind of season he was having. No one asked about her brother, and whether he had joined the fighting. Maybe because they knew the answer; maybe because they didn't really want to know.
After those first few awkward moments, there was nothing for Lily to do except watch them fetch wood and water and arrange the room so that she might have some privacy. They ran a rope across one corner of the room and from that they hung blankets that were pungent, but effective in screening off the one bed from the rest of the cabin. Lily disappeared behind the makeshift curtain as soon as it was up and lay down to stare at the ceiling and listen to the men as they sorted through their
packs and shaved and began to cook. They spoke English and French rolled together with words from other languages—some clearly Indian—in that strange but oddly effective manner of the Canadian woodsman. It was rough and musical and Lily liked the sound of it. Someone put meat to roast over the hearth and the smell made Lily realize how hungry she was. Then Simon came in and they greeted him with such warmth that Lily was pleased for him.
After a while her attention drifted to the wall where a picture had been nailed, a drawing of a severe man with a chin beard. Next to him was a much younger woman, round cheeked with a dimpled chin, who was smiling shyly. Lily wondered if this was Sorry Tom, and how he had earned such a name, for in this picture he did not look sorry in the least, but grim and disapproving. Then, intrigued, she got up on her knees and studied the drawing more closely.
Something hard and sweet clicked in her throat, as it would if she had come unexpectedly around a corner to find her mother or father there. She touched the paper carefully with a fingertip and leaned forward to smell it, with the silly thought that there might be some scent left of the man who had done the work. Because she recognized it, now that she looked closely. Gabriel Oak had drawn this likeness; Gabriel Oak had been in these woods some many years ago and had sat in front of the hearth and drawn for his supper and a warm place to sleep. In a corner he had placed his mark, but she would have recognized his work without it.
Gabriel Oak, who had been her first teacher and her most beloved. Hot tears pushed up into her eyes and fell without warning, a great waterfall not so much of sadness, for he was dead these many years, but of thankfulness for the gift he had given her: a knowledge of herself.
Lily thought of the box in the sleigh she had packed so carefully. Her most cherished possessions: the old book that Gabriel had left her, filled with his drawings and notes, the letters her mother had written, her good pencils and a block of paper, things she had meant to use to make a record of this journey. Not once had she opened it, but that would change. She cleared her throat so the voltigeurs would know that she was about to make an appearance, and went out to take their likenesses.
Backwoodsmen, usually solitary by nature, were generally argumentative when herded together, and these men were no different. A fistfight might have broken out over who was to sit for Lily, and in what order, had not Lieutenant MacLeod intervened. The lucky ones were sent out to scrub their faces in the snow, and someone produced a wooden comb out of a haversack and passed it around, though from what Lily could see it would do little good.
For all their grime and coarse talk, they were strong men in their prime, and she found the truth of them in letting her pencil move over the paper.
Her third subject was a man with the remarkable name of Uz Brodie, who was eager to tell her the history of the war farther to the west. That caught Lily's attention.
“You've been as far as the lakes?” she asked.
“I spent three months on the St. Lawrence,” he said, not without pride. “But they sent us home for the Yule, and after I thought I'd be better off under Salaberry, so I joined up with the voltigeurs.”
“He'd had enough of Red George and his clergymen,” called a voice from the other side of the cabin. “A priest six and a half foot tall.”
“A magical priest, for he grows a few inches with each telling,” added another voice.
MacLeod raised his voice to be heard. “Uz tells us the priest goes into battle with a great crucifix that he uses like a pike.”
“A Jesuit, no doubt,” Simon said in his dry way. That set the room off again; Catholics, Lily noticed, liked a joke at the expense of their priests, if they did not skirt too close to the truth. Simon especially liked such jokes, perhaps, she reminded herself, because he had an uncle who was a Jesuit.
“Uz Brodie, chased off by a priest,” hooted a small man on the other side of the room.
The reaction was immediate, for Brodie flushed a mottled red and thrust out his chest like an affronted turkey. Indeed, he looked a great deal like a turkey, Lily thought, with a wattle of red skin on his neck and a nose blue with cold and sharp as a beak and quick black eyes.
“You laugh, Clarke, laugh on. But there's no place for priests among fighting men.”
“And why not? I've nothing against priests,” said the small man, who, Lily noticed now, was missing all the teeth on one side of his mouth and, as if to compensate, had a thick red scar where the opposite eyebrow should be.
“You wouldn't like these priests, that I promise you.”
Drew Clarke said, “I was hoping there'd be a priest or two at the garrison. My Jeanne, she has got marriage on the mind, and she'll want a priest to do the job.”
An unfortunate turn of phrase, but it was said and Clarke must wait out the laughter. Then MacLeod unfolded himself from his spot on the floor and raised both hands in the air in a gesture that managed to be both forceful and easy.
“Brodie,” he said. “Tell the whole story, now. Wasn't there a parson too?”
Simon's head came up suddenly. “I've heard of this. A Mr. Brown, who's got the habit of moving laggards into battle by thumping them with his Bible.”
This time the laughter went on for so long that Lily gave up her work for a moment until the worst had passed. Her subject on his stool before her ducked his head but could not hide his embarrassment. He grinned at Lily, sheepishly.
“I take it you had dealings with this Mr. Brown,” she said, going back to her drawing.
“Well, yes,” he said, subdued. “I did. But it was an accident, him falling into the river, I swear it.”
“Bible and all,” said MacLeod. “A sorry accident indeed.”
“And Forsyth? Did you ever get a look at him?” Lily asked, and felt Simon stiffen beside her, as if she had given too much away about her own interests and loyalties.
But none of the men seemed to be unsettled by her question, and instead launched into piecing together what news they had of the campaigns along the St. Lawrence, where raids moved back and forth with regularity and the smugglers had grown bold. Lily listened, but heard nothing of Jim Booke's riflemen or her brother or Blue-Jay, and after a while the conversation turned in other directions.
She had done drawings of most of the men when weariness overtook her and she excused herself, leaving Simon to talk to the men while she retired behind her blanket.
“A fine wife you've found yourself,” she heard MacLeod say to Simon, who made a deep sound in his throat, the one that a Scot made when he was deeply satisfied, but didn't care to say so plainly.
She thought of calling out that she wasn't his wife yet, and that she did not care to be handed off so easily, when another voice spoke up.
“Her brother approves the match?”
“And if he didn't, it's not the brother I'm marrying,” said Simon.
“You're still partners, you and Luke.”
Lily reminded herself that these men were trappers, and would go back to trading furs when the war was done; they weren't so much interested in her marriage as they were in Luke's business affairs, and by extension, Simon's.
“Aye,” said Simon sharply.
“I was just asking, man. No need to bristle.”
“Well, you're talking about his wife's family,” said Uz Brodie. “A man's got a right to be prickly about something like that. Especially a man married to Luke Bonner's sister.”
“I heard tell she was pretty,” said another voice, one Lily couldn't put a face to. “But she's all hair and eyes. You'd have to shake the bed sheets to find her. I like more meat on the bone, moi.”
There was an ominous silence, and Lily imagined that Simon had fixed the speaker with his most displeased look, for the man muttered an apology.
“No offense,” he said.
“Not if you keep a civil tongue in your head,” Simon answered.
Fully awake now, Lily listened closely but heard nothing more about herself. Gradually she drifted off to sleep, only to wake and find Si
mon sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Am I too thin?” she asked him.
In the near dark she could not see if he was smiling, but his voice told her that he was.
“Slender,” he said. “And finely proportioned.”
“You've got no complaints, then.” She was angling for compliments, of course; too late she remembered that such tactics never worked with Simon Ballentyne and in fact took her just where she would rather not go.
“One,” he said. “I'm cold, and tired.”
She had meant to make him sleep on the other side of the blanket with the soldiers, but that would shame him, she understood that. And what difference did it make, really. She would never see these men again, and they believed her already married. She made room for him on the narrow bed and discovered that he had stripped down to his shirt.
“You cheeky—” She started, and stopped, too much involved with removing Simon's hand from her breast to talk just then. Finally she whispered, “You cannot be serious.”
“If you can be quiet, I can be aye serious,” he answered, his hands roaming.
She caught them up in her own and held them away from her. “We are in the same room with twenty-one strange men,” she hissed.
“There's a blanket.” He tried to kiss her but she turned her head away and felt his mouth on her cheek, as hot as a branding iron.
“Simon. A blanket is not a wall.”
“For a lass who grew up on the frontier you're aye particular, Lily Bonner. How do you think men and women who live in one-room cabins ever get bairns?”
That question silenced her for a moment, because of course it was something she had thought about quite often when she was younger and had first started contemplating the things that men and women did together in the dark. In her own home her parents had a chamber to themselves, but most cabins in Paradise had only one room where everyone slept together. Much like this.
A few feet away a man coughed softly and cursed to himself. Then came the distinct sound of piss hitting the walls of a metal pot in a forceful stream.