Fire Along the Sky Fire Along the Sky

by Sara Donati

  Luke, and Runs-from-Bears. She heard herself breathe a great sigh of relief as she pulled back the door skin.

  Father O'Neill stood in the middle of the shack, the candle on the low table throwing his shadow up to the roof: a long black ghost jittering there.

  Jennet's voice caught in her throat but all that came from her mouth was a soft sound, a quick sigh.

  “Lady Jennet of Carryck,” said the priest with a small, satisfied smile. “And here I thought you'd be asleep in your lover's arms until dawn. I suppose you've come to get these?”

  The letters she had hidden away. The ones she had promised Hannah to burn. Letters from Lake in the Clouds, from Luke, from her mother in Scotland. She had wrapped them in oilskin and put them in a hollow scraped out of the hard ground beneath her pallet. Because she could not bear to part with them; because she was a fool.

  In the same moment something came to her with the force of a hammer blow: Father O'Neill was wearing rough breeches and a worn leather jerkin over a muslin shirt, and he looked nothing like a priest out of his soutane. Because, she understood now, he was no priest. Because Luke had been right to warn her about this man.

  “Give me those,” she said, her voice creaking. And then, more firmly: “They don't belong to you.”

  He raised his eyebrows, all dark good humor, and ignored her outstretched hand. “I'll admit, you had me fooled for a good long while. I never would have taken you for an earl's daughter, much less an American spy. If you hadn't given yourself away last night I would be much the poorer.” He looked with some satisfaction at the letters in his hand.

  “You followed me.”

  He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I was seeing to my own business, and there you were, the two of you.”

  “So you took the opportunity to come back here and steal.”

  O'Neill scratched his jaw with one thumbnail. “Curiosity has ever been my downfall. But these letters cleared up my confusion, and quite nicely too. Won't the colonel be surprised to know he invited a pair of spies to his supper table.”

  “We are not spies.” Jennet's voice came clear, and she was thankful for that much.

  “And do you doubt the colonel will see it that way, once he's read these? The Earl of Carryck a secret Catholic and his sister working against the Crown in Canada, now won't that be news from Aberdeen to London? I wonder if they'll build a scaffold big enough to hang all of you at once, or if you'll have to wait your turn. Perhaps,” he said, with a broad smile, “they'll string you up next to your sweetheart, if you ask nicely.”

  Jennet was in danger of fainting, for the first time in her life. She balled her fists in her skirts to keep them from shaking and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. With every bit of strength she could summon, she steadied her voice. “You'll be there with us, I'm sure. To turn me in you must turn in yourself.”

  “That would be sloppy of me, would it not? But I've got another idea, one that will please me, at the least.”

  The question escaped her before she could stop it. “Who are you?”

  He bowed from the shoulders. “Anselme Dégre of Barataria, by way of Acadia, at your service. Now why don't you sit down here and listen to my proposition. If it's to your liking, why, your friends will go off to their fate with no interference from me. Or we could go straightaway and pay a visit to the colonel. Which will it be?”

  Her gaze skittered through the tiny shack, moving over pallets and bowls and the few skirts and bodices hung from nails in the rough walls. Nothing that would serve as a weapon. She thought of running; no doubt she could disappear quick enough, but she would not, could not leave the letters in his hands. It seemed that there was hardly enough air to breathe, and what was there reeked with rancid tallow and sweat and her own bitter foolishness.

  “What do you mean to do with me?”

  He laughed out loud, a pleased laugh, full of pride, not only at his own clever plan but that she had caught on to it. “Let me put your mind to rest, cher. I've got no interest in bedding you.”

  That idea hadn't presented itself just yet, and still Jennet felt herself relax. “Then what?”

  He turned his head sharply to listen as women walked through the camp, arguing softly. When he looked at her again some of the playfulness had left his expression. “Sad to say, there's no time for more talk just now.”

  “Don't let me keep you,” Jennet said. “I'll take my letters and you can be off, I'll say nothing to the colonel.”

  He took the letters and tucked them into his shirt, patted them fondly. “It won't be that easy, I fear. You've got two choices. I can tie you up neatly with the letters tucked into the ropes, and send a sentry along—” He held up a hand to stop her protest. “In which case you'll hang and your lover with you, and the prisoners will rot in a prison ship. Or you can come along with me now and give them the chance to get away.”

  Jennet caught the edge of the table to keep herself from swaying. “You want me to come with you?”

  “We're off for warmer waters, Lady Jennet, far south of here. Out of reach, so to speak.”

  “Luke will follow us,” Jennet said. “He will come after me. He'll never give up.”

  “No doubt he would try,” said Anselme Dégre. “Were it not for the letter you're about to write.”

  Daniel Bonner, eighteen years old, born and raised on the frontier in New-York State, having served for a few short months as a rifleman in the American cause, rose on a bright summer morning that would be his last as a prisoner, and knew that he was done with war.

  In a line with the rest of the prisoners he shuffled out of the deserted garrison toward the transport ship Fair Winds. There were many sailors among the prisoners, and they spoke among themselves about the ship in no complimentary terms. Even from this good distance they diagnosed rot and weakened timbers and poor knees. Not that it mattered, they said in lower voices, and elbowed each other knowingly.

  If not for the fact that Daniel stood in line waiting to be shackled, he might have found something to laugh at in the rumors that the men passed back and forth. In the few hours since Jennet brought her news the story had grown to astonishing proportions. The entire American navy waited just around the next bend in the river, it seemed, and was poised to deliver swift justice and freedom.

  Daniel wondered what they would say if he told them that it wasn't a navy who would rescue them, but his own brother and uncle and cousin. He had unlimited faith in his own people, but even so, he could hardly imagine how they would manage what they had promised. They could not turn the ship for American waters without sailing directly into the British force that had left at dawn to provoke a battle; to sail north was only to go deeper into Canada.

  He turned his head away while the blacksmith worked, and reminded himself that the manacles would be struck off before the sun had set.

  And still their weight dragged on his left arm, freed of its sling. The part of his mind that could still think about these things with some degree of detachment noted that the pain had a particular quality today, as though a hot wire had been stuck into his shoulder joint. A pain that moved like a live thing with a mind of its own, burrowing into bone like a worm into sand.

  There had been no more laudanum this morning. In the night his sister had given the last of it to Liam Kirby, and then waited with him until he was gone. Unable to sleep, Daniel had watched. Hannah's expression had never changed all through that terrible hour. She was as steady as the stars and as fragile as crystal, not thirty years old but when she finally rose up and let his body be taken away, she moved like a woman at the end of a long life.

  The war had taken the use of his arm from Daniel, but his sister had not got away so easy.

  Daniel would have refused the laudanum if there had been any for the taking. Not because he welcomed the pain or wanted to punish himself, but because the stuff made him stupid, and today he must have his wits about him. He was going home, finally, and for good. The idea filled h
im with relief and terror both.

  He wanted his people the way he wanted to breathe; he could not close his eyes without seeing them, or dream without hearing their voices. But on the mountain where he had been born and raised there would be no avoiding the question that he pushed away every waking minute of the day. He would see it in his mother's face and hear it in every word his sister spoke. They would do everything in their power to help him heal, but every day it would be asked in a hundred different ways: what would he do with his life if he never regained the use of his arm? If he couldn't handle a rifle, if he couldn't set a trap, or skin a deer, or wield an axe. Who would that man be; what would he see when he looked into the glass?

  “Three ships and two dozen gunboats gone south,” Daniel heard one man say to another as the line of prisoners shambled through the garrison past the deserted parade ground. “And what fine weather it is for a bloodbath. May every one of the bastards find a grave at the bottom of the lake.”

  A year ago Daniel would have despaired to think that he would have no part in the battle that must be taking place right now. He had left home eager for war and the chance to prove himself, as his father had done and his grandfathers before him. The lessons he had learned on Nut Island were not the ones he had hoped for, and they left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “Move along there,” shouted the guards to the clashing rhythm of men in chains. “Step lively!”

  On the other side of the parade ground there was a sudden shouting, men running back and forth in high agitation, the flash of sunlight on muzzles. An officer came toward the docks in a dead run, waving his arms frantically.

  “Hold! Hold there! Stop!”

  Before he went to war, Daniel had tried to imagine the kind of fear that lived on battlefields and fed on gunfire; he had asked his father and uncle and his grandfather about it, and they had all told him the same thing: the fear could be, must be banished. It was the first, the unavoidable enemy; a man who couldn't outrun fear for his own life would never be a warrior.

  That was one kind of fear, Daniel learned now, and here was another. As officers and marines ran toward the ship, guns at the ready, he felt the weight of the chains that bound him and thought of his sister and cousin, and knew himself to be powerless. The agony of his shoulder was nothing to this new pain.

  The captain had come off the ship to meet the officers just where the line of prisoners had stopped. He was a great plug of a man with an outsized face flushed a peculiar shade of plum.

  “Colonel Caudebec,” panted the officer who had come from the blockhouse. “Colonel Caudebec is murdered and the paymasters with him. Throats cut.” He put back his head and shouted to the sky. “Christ Almighty!” Then he threw his body forward and vomited onto his boots.

  “When?” asked the captain, turning to another officer. “How?”

  The men, officers and guards alike, began talking all at once, their voices raised and clashing. It seemed that nothing of any sense would ever be said, until another officer appeared approaching from the direction of the followers' camp. He was moving at a lope, fast and easy, and Daniel had the idea that of all the military men he had seen thus far on this island, this unnamed major—by his uniform one of the infamous King's Rangers—would be the most serious threat on a battlefield.

  A short officer, a barrel-shaped captain, began shouting orders in a combination of English and French: the prisoners were to be returned to the stockade, the ship searched for the missing pay chests, the garrison surrounded. Then he saw the captain from the King's Rangers approaching and he seemed to collect himself. He pulled at his coat, straightened his hat, and made an attempt to calm his expression.

  “Major Wyndham,” he said. “Everything is under control. We will have the rascals within the half hour.”

  “The rascals are long gone,” said the major. “Keep everyone where they are for the moment.” Then he turned, his gaze scanning the men and sailors who stood along the dock.

  “Mr. Bonner,” he called. “A word, please, and right away.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing, in and out, as he tried, without success, to gather his thoughts. When he looked again, his brother was standing beside Major Wyndham, their heads bent together.

  Blue-Jay was standing just behind Daniel, and so he took a step in that direction. He spoke Mohawk, and kept his voice low. “Where are my sister and my cousin?”

  The answer came back in the same language. “The guard says that Walks-Ahead is already on the ship. She went on board with the injured men an hour ago, while we were in the exercise yard.”

  “And Jennet?”

  There was a pause while Blue-Jay looked through the crowd. “No sign of her.” And then, “Have a look there, the ship's captain.”

  Except the man who came down the gangplank wasn't any captain. He was wearing the uniform of a Royal Navy officer, that much was true, but he had never worn one before this day and, Daniel would wage his other good arm on it, would never wear one again after.

  Jim Booke was directing the guards to carry on with the boarding of the prisoners, never raising his voice and staying well clear of the officers who stood on the shore.

  The other men would all know of Jim Booke by his reputation, but none of them had ever seen the man, which was a good thing. Some one of them would give the game away, otherwise. Instead it looked, just for the moment, as if they might rebel.

  A few minutes ago they had been glad to see the ship and eager to board, thinking themselves close to freedom; now they balked, some of them looking to Daniel for assurances he could not give them. In the end muskets were argument enough, and the slow shuffle toward the gangplank began again.

  At dawn Mr. Whistler had come to wake Hannah with the news that the guards were come with the litters, and the sickest men were to board the transport ship first, and right away. She rubbed her eyes while he talked, and slowly two things came to her. Liam was dead, and Jennet had yet to come back from the followers' camp.

  Daniel and Blue-Jay had already been marched out into the exercise yard to be manacled, but she was not so worried about them. It was Jennet's absence that disturbed her. But there was no time to do anything about that. She turned her mind to tending to the sick.

  And still when the opportunity came, she could not keep herself from asking questions of the guards. None of them had seen Jennet. Even the friendliest of them had nothing to add that was any comfort.

  Uz Brodie said, “She's supposed to be going to Montreal with the priest, is what I heard, and he left hours ago.”

  “Unless she changed her mind?” asked one of the younger guards with a hopeful expression. “I can't see Mrs. Huntar as a nun, not for the life of me.”

  Hannah's uneasiness grew all through the next hour of moving men who should have been left in peace. While she adjusted splinted legs and put rolled blankets under strained backs she tried to keep her mind off Jennet, and failed completely.

  Perhaps she had gone with the priest, and would let herself be taken to the convent in Montreal. From there she could easily leave, and make her way to Luke's place. Perhaps she had already gone on board the ship with Luke, and was waiting there impatiently.

  That must be it, of course. And still Hannah fumbled with the simplest tasks, and could not gather her thoughts.

  By the time her patients were on board the Fair Wind, Hannah had the first evidence that Luke's plan was in place. She had never before been on board a Royal Navy transport ship, but she knew by looking at them that the sailors were her countrymen, regardless of the uniforms they wore. They were met by an officer who dismissed the garrison guards with a few curt words and then waited until those men were gone before he spoke to her.

  “You're wanted in the captain's quarters, ma'am. I'm to tell you the prisoners will be well looked after there.”

  Mr. Whistler looked the man up and down. “Tell me, son,” he said with a wink. “Where is it in England that you got that New-York
accent?”

  “A piece west of London,” came the gruff answer. “Newburgh on the Hudson.”

  In the captain's cabin there were hastily put together berths for the sick men, and waiting among them, Many-Doves. Hannah looked at her aunt and cousin for a long moment before she could make her legs move her forward, and then she walked into her, where she stood, shaking, and without words.

  When she could control her voice she said, “Daniel and Blue-Jay will be coming on board with the other prisoners.”

  “They'll be brought straight here,” Luke said. He had come into the cabin behind her. His color was high, and his eyes bright with excitement or worry or both, Hannah could not say.

  Hannah said, “I don't know where Jennet is. Do you?”

  If he had an answer it was lost in the shouting that rose suddenly from the shore.

  “What's that?” Mr. Whistler went to the porthole and squinted out. “Holy Mother, what's happened?”

  Hannah heard it then, the sound of men shouting, loud enough to be heard over the creaking of the ship and the wind. The sound of plans gone awry, of disaster.

  Luke went to look, and then he came back to Hannah. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Listen to me now, sister. Are you listening?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “When I give the signal, this ship will sail immediately, with or without me. In that case Jim Booke will have command until Runs-from-Bears comes on board. If you must sail without me, then do not look back. Do you understand?”

  There were many questions she wanted to ask, but only one thing she could think to say.

  “We will not leave you behind.”

  “You will, if I say so,” said her brother, his gaze hard and his grip on her shoulder unrelenting. “I promise you I will do everything in my power to stay alive. Will you be satisfied with that?”

  “What choice do I have?”