Fire Along the Sky (20 page)

Martha looked at Jennet and then at Curiosity. Finally she cleared her throat and said, “Thank you kindly, but we can't set. My ma sent us to say, the widow died in her sleep last night and can you get word up to Lake in the Clouds that there's no call for Hannah Bonner to come by anymore.”

The words tumbled out in a rush, punctuated by sharp indrawn breaths. Callie said nothing at all but only studied her shoes. As far as Jennet knew she hadn't spoken to anybody since her mother's death.

Curiosity pushed herself up out of the rocker and made her way across the kitchen, hobbling a little, Jennet saw, and favoring her right leg. She was barely taller than the girls, but she stretched out her arms and drew them to her, and they went willingly.

“Why now, that's sad news,” she said softly, rubbing thin shoulders through blanket coats still crusted with snow. “It surely is. You come in now and take off these cold wraps and drink something warm, and then you tell me all about it.”

Martha's expression softened and her eyelids fluttered, as if she might fall asleep right where she stood. Even Callie seemed to take some comfort from Curiosity, but when Jennet caught her eye, she turned her face away.

“Sometime the best thing is to just say a thing out loud.” Curiosity pulled her head back to look Martha in the eye. “Just let the whole story out. You'll feel better for it, child. You surely will.”

The little girls exchanged a look full of shadows and worries. Martha shook her head. “Thank you kindly, but we've got to go on now, my ma wouldn't like it if we made her wait.”

In the late afternoon, when Hannah knew she could no longer put off the trip to the village, Charlie LeBlanc came to Lake in the Clouds with news of the widow's death. The first thing Hannah felt was relief, that she would not have to leave home today after all. She was so relieved that she could think of no questions to ask, which turned out not to matter anyway: Charlie told what he knew without prompting.

Elizabeth's questions were all about Martha, who had found her grandmother, stiff and cold, her eyes open wide.

“Like she saw a ghost,” offered Charlie. A very Charlie-like embellishment, one that none of them challenged. Nor did they ask any real questions; confronted with one, Charlie LeBlanc could always think up an answer. He had never been one to be slowed down by facts.

He said, “Lots of graves to be dug this spring. Folks say the doctor will be next.”

“How is Richard?” asked Elizabeth. “Do you have word of him?”

“Oh, he's about the same. On the decline.” Charlie's jaw worked as he tried to settle his false teeth more comfortably. Then he seemed to remember something and he turned to look directly at Hannah.

“I almost forgot to say. Curiosity sends word—” He coughed twice into his mittened hand.

“Becca is after me to give up tobacco,” he said when he got his voice back. There were tears in his eyes. “Don't know if she's more interested in saving the money or my lungs.”

“That's not a tobacco cough,” Hannah said. “You've got a catarrh coming on.”

“Well, jumping Jesus,” Charlie said. “That too.”

“What was it Curiosity wanted you to say?” Elizabeth asked, with something less than her usual patience.

Charlie blinked at her. “Curiosity?”

“You said ‘Curiosity sends word,'” Elizabeth prompted.

“Oh, so I did. She sends word Richard had a good night and there ain't much going on to worry about just now.”

“Ah,” said Hannah, and realized that she had been holding her breath. “Then there's no need for me to come down to the village.”

“I suppose not,” said Charlie, but he looked at her thoughtfully. “Not if you got reason to stay away.”

“I'll come down in a few days,” said Hannah.

“I'll let her know,” Charlie said.

Late that night, awake in her bed and without hope of rest, Hannah got up and went to the window. There was no moon and little light, but she had grown up in these woods and she knew how to keep still until her eyes could adjust. In time the starlight showed her familiar shapes, places she had walked as a girl, trees on a ridge silhouetted against the sky that she knew one by one. Even in the night this place held no secrets, waves of dark on dark and gauzy grays but familiar to her and comforting.

Below, at the foot of the mountain in the narrow river valley, the village was asleep. Hannah felt it there, a quiet hive humming to itself in the cold dark. She closed her eyes and tried to see it but all that came to her mind's eye was the lake, bow shaped, moon shaped, ice encased. Unyielding, dead to the eye, but pulsing with life deep below the surface. Like a great expanse of belly thrumming full of life. In the spring the sun would stroke that smooth surface until it weakened and cracked and life could push its way back up into the light and air.

In the spring the lake would come to life, and the earth would soften and in the village they would dig graves for the dead.

Behind her she heard Gabriel stir and shift and sigh to himself in his dreams. Since the twins had gone away he slept in Lily's bed, a restless sleeper always at odds with covers, always struggling with his dreams.

She went to sit on the edge of the bed. In the dark he was just a little boy, any little boy. Hannah lay down next to him and went to sleep.

Curiosity ran an orderly household, one that rolled along smoothly without any discussion or argument, so different from the kitchen at Carryckcastle that Jennet sometimes wondered if the women went behind closed doors to bicker.

One day passed and then another. Most of the chores that Jennet took on were easy enough, at least the ones outside the sickroom; more than that, she liked talking to Sally and Lucy and Curiosity and most especially to Ethan, who was a quiet soul but a thoughtful one, full of odd observations and willing to tell stories, when he was asked.

The sickroom was the hardest part, not because Richard was a demanding or difficult patient. An argument would have been far preferable to watching the man struggle with pain. The illness had got the upper hand now, and while Richard Todd seemed unwilling to die quite yet, he had forfeited his temper and moods, good and bad. For the most part he slept with the help of opium, and it was during those long periods that Jennet sat beside his bed, watching his breathing and counting his pulse, as Ethan had taught her to do.

She did not like to touch him. She didn't like the hot dry skin stretched tight over heavy bones, skin that had gone such a deep shade of yellow that Jennet must think of egg yolks congealed and rotting. She didn't like the fact that any touch at all—her own light fingers, the sheet pulled up over his swollen abdomen, the cup held so gently to his mouth for him to sip—any touch at all caused him to moan in pain. She didn't like these things but she did her best to hide her own feelings.

“You make a good nurse,” Ethan told her one evening when they sat together at the supper table. Soon he must go and relieve Curiosity, who was sitting with Richard, but for now he seemed relaxed and even content. Jennet studied him closely but could find no glimmer of resentment or unhappiness in his expression.

“You have remarkable calm for a man of just twenty years,” Jennet said. “Where does it come from?”

Ethan lifted a shoulder as if to disavow the compliment. “I have had good teachers. Curiosity and Galileo and Nathaniel and Elizabeth.”

He said nothing of Dr. Todd, and Jennet did not make a point of the omission. She said, “What will you do, when—”

“I haven't thought much about that,” Ethan answered before she could finish. For the first time Jennet had the certain sense that Ethan was lying to her. He thought, she was quite sure, of nothing else except what he would do with himself. When this vigil had finally taken its end.

When going down to the village could be avoided no longer, Hannah offered to take the children along with her. For the exercise, she said; but in truth because she needed the company and the distraction. But Many-Doves needed Annie with her for the day, and so Gabriel had Hannah to himself, as he put it.

And he was a distraction of the first order, moving first faster and then slower than she wanted to, stopping to study tracks in the snow or gather up treasures, disappearing and reappearing without warning. He knew no fear, and that in itself made Hannah fear for him, as she had once feared for Daniel, and for her own son. Sometimes it seemed that time had folded back on itself and merged this youngest brother with the older one, they were so much alike in their physical beings, in their curiosity about the world and the way they moved in the woods.

Once in the village Gabriel ran ahead to the trading post, shedding his snowshoes and disappearing through the door before Hannah could think of an excuse to call him back. On her own she would have forgone the pleasures of Anna McGarrity's curious company and plodded on, but now she couldn't avoid at least a short visit without giving offense. She followed her brother, taking more time than she needed with the unbuckling of her snowshoes.

After a blizzard the trading post was always busy. People came for supplies and news and simple companionship outside their own walls. Men settled in front of the hearth or the Franklin stove to play drafts or skittles or to whittle while they talked; children studied the jars of peppermints and malt drops with their hands folded decorously behind their backs; women nursed babies and traded advice and weaving patterns and gossip.

When Hannah came in every head turned in her direction, took stock of her health, or lack of it, the mantle she was wearing, the color in her cheeks, her expression. Some called out a few words, others only nodded. A few ignored her studiously. Coming into the crowded trading post always reminded Hannah of running a gauntlet, though it would have shocked and offended the people of Paradise if she were ever to say such a thing. They might overlook the fact that she was red-skinned—the ones who had known her since she was a child, at least—but their tolerance would not extend to such a comparison.

One small blessing presented itself in the form of old Mrs. Hindle, who was taking all of Anna McGarrity's attention to settle a debt. The widow Hindle took a coin from a pile of tarnished pennies she had poured out in front of herself, examined it front and back, and then pushed it across the counter to Anna with one swollen red finger.

“Seventy-four,” Anna said patiently, and winked at Hannah.

“You heard the news about the Widow Kuick?” called Jed from a far corner. He was stacking boxes and dust whirled around him like a storm cloud.

“That's old news,” said Charlie from his spot by the hearth. “I went up there a week ago to tell them.”

Hannah agreed that he had indeed brought them the news, looking not at Charlie but for her brother, whom she finally found where he had inserted himself into the crowd around the stove. Gabriel had all their attention, because—Hannah realized now, and with some disquiet—he was giving them the best news he had to offer, the things he could remember about the letter from Luke that had come just before the storm.

And he had their attention. Jan Kaes, the oldest man in the village now, had hunched his shoulders over and turned his good ear to Gabriel. Horace Greber and the Cameron brothers were listening with their mouths hanging open. Martin Ratz and Praise-Be Cunningham had crossed their arms on their chests, affronted by what they were hearing.

Hannah heard it too:
my sister Lily
and
my brother
and
Simon Ballentyne
and then she walked forward as quickly as she could.

“Gabriel Bonner,” she said in her severest tone.

He looked up at her, big-eyed. “It's only news from Montreal,” he said. “They want to hear about how Lily's an artist and all.”

“Sounds like she's doing more husband hunting than studying,” said Missy Parker, who was not sitting with the men, but examining a keg of nails nearby.

Obediah Cameron grunted. He was forty and single and had bad eyes but was still hopeful of a wife; his brother had got one, after all. He squinted up at Hannah. “You think your Lily will marry up there and we'll never see her again?”

“Well, what else did you expect,” Hannah said, trying for playful and not quite making it. “With Charlie LeBlanc married off, was she supposed to sit around and pine?”

They laughed uneasily and exchanged glances she was not meant to see or understand.

“The boy did right to come tell his news,” said Horace Greber. “Don't you scold him now.” He scratched at the stump of his leg with the stem of his pipe.

“I hope she does find a husband up there in Canada,” said Lizzie Cameron, looking up from the baby at her breast. “There's not enough men to go around as it is, God knows. Didn't Margit Hindle have to go all the way to Albany to find herself a husband?”

Her brother-in-law made faces at that, but Lizzie wasn't bothered.

“Not enough of anything to go around here,” added Charlie.

“If and when Lily marries, you will hear about it, I'm sure,” Hannah said in a calmer tone. “But right now there is no such news.”

Gabriel's eyes blazed defiance. “That's not what Luke says!”

She shot him a warning glance. “Enough, little brother.”

“But—”

She stopped him by reaching over and grabbing him by the ear. Gabriel howled once and hopped until she let him go.

“I was only being neighborly.” He rubbed his ear and scowled up at her, red faced.

Hannah took him by the elbow and turned him toward the door.

Nicholas Wilde stood there, his face as white as milk. Snow covered his bare head and shoulders.

“Why, Nicholas,” said Anna from the counter. “You look plain sick. Set down before you keel over, man.”

He managed a small, tight smile. “It's just coming in from the cold,” he said. “I'll be all right in a minute. It's just the shock of the cold.”

Curiosity looked up from the butter churn when they came through the door and Hannah could almost see the worry that had sat heavy on her shoulders lift and float away. The kitchen smelled of gingerbread and yeast and roasting pork and, underneath it all, the sickly sweet smell of laudanum.