Fire Along the Sky (3 page)

Hannah looked up from a copy of a letter Richard had written to a chemical warehouse in London, requesting a list of things that were unfamiliar to her. A strange prickling on the back of her neck: interest in things she thought she had left behind, curiosity, irritation that those impulses she thought dead could twitch to life without warning or bidding.

Curiosity was watching her, eyes narrowed. Hannah cleared her mind and closed the daybook.

She said, “Curiosity, what makes you think Richard will listen to me? He never did before.”

For a good while there was no sound but the rapid-fire crack-crack-crack of bean pods while Hannah studied Curiosity and waited for an answer.

Of all the things Hannah had feared about coming home she had been most worried that she would find Curiosity gone. She should be, at almost eighty with a hard life behind her. But Curiosity was as steady and constant as the river itself, if bowed a little by the years. There were new sorrows etched into her face: she had lost her good husband to a stroke, a grandson to a brain fever, a daughter and granddaughter on the same day to a runaway horse and sleigh; and her only son was someplace in the west, fighting a battle that could not be won.

If he was alive at all.

But Curiosity's spirit was undaunted and her energy undiminished; the very nearness of her was a comfort.

Hannah had been home for weeks now, and while all the others were growing less and less able to keep their questions to themselves, Curiosity seemed content to wait until Hannah was ready to talk, if it took a year or ten years or never came at all.

Somewhere in the pines that ringed the clearing a kinglet was calling in a thin high
seet-seet-seet;
she heard kestrels and blackbirds and the soft, gentle song of a hermit thrush as sweet as the lullabies her grandmother Cora had sung to her as a child. In another month the birds would be gone south; they would pull the summer light along behind them like a bridal train. In two months the trees where they built their nests would be gravid with snow. Half-Moon Lake and the lake under the falls would freeze and beneath the ice, water without color would pulse and throb.

A sound bubbled up from deep in her throat and she swallowed it back down again.

How can you fear anything at all after the battle of Kettippecannunk?

In her mind Hannah could hear her husband's voice as clearly as the kestrel's. If she answered Strikes-the-Sky, if she reacted to his tone—calm and teasing all at once—he would be with her for the rest of the day. He would argue with her for hours and take great pleasure in it, if she let him. The only way to make him go was to ask him the one real question—the only question, the one she would not ask for fear of getting an answer.

She ignored him, but he was not willing to be ignored.

Walks-Ahead, you cannot hide within your silence.

Here was the most irritating thing of all: in this strange absence of his, gone but not gone, alive in some ways and dead in others, Strikes-the-Sky was always right, his arguments without flaw.

At Lake in the Clouds the women forbade talk of war in their hearing, but that changed nothing. It was all around and drawing closer every day. Twice a week the post rider brought the most recent news and the papers and the men gathered in the trading post to weigh it all out, bullet by bullet. Hannah turned her face away when her brother and cousin tried to tell her about it.

But she knew the truth of it: she could not protect herself from sorrows old or new. War was not
coming;
it had already pushed into their midst. It would not die of her neglect or be turned away by calm words.

More and more often Hannah had the urge to say these things to Curiosity, who was none of her blood but as close to her as her own grandmothers had been. Both those grandmothers—one a Scot and the other Mohawk—were long dead and content to remain silent in their graves, but Curiosity would speak for them and herself. Once Hannah gave her permission, Curiosity would ask questions that dug themselves beneath the skin like gunpowder.

“That's the thing about Richard,” Curiosity said, and Hannah started out of her thoughts.

“What about him?”

Curiosity flicked her a concerned look. “I've known old mules beset with fly-bots less ornery. But I expect that don't much surprise you.”

“He was never known for his brilliant personality,” Hannah agreed. And then: “But there's something more, isn't there. Is he sick?”

“He is,” Curiosity said, her tone subdued.

“How sick?” Hannah asked the question knowing she would not get an answer; the older woman could be deaf when she chose.

Curiosity had turned her head toward the door. She stood, clutching the bowl to her narrow chest.

“Speak of the devil.”

Hannah heard the riders now, the drumming of hooves that seemed as loud as thunder. A flush of panic mounted her back to set its teeth in the tender curve of her neck.

Curiosity put the bowl of beans aside and crossed the room to Hannah in three steps. One hand, as lean and rough as leather, cupped her cheek. “There now,” she said softly. “Rest easy.”

Hannah blinked at her, swallowed hard and tried to speak.

“Hush.” Curiosity made a comforting sound. “No need to explain, child. A rider don't necessarily mean bad news. Just settle yourself down again and I'll go see to it.”

But Hannah could not stay away from the door. She followed Curiosity out into the sunlight just as a young woman pulled her horse to a quick stop and slid from the saddle to land lightly on her feet.

A woman, yes, but no taller than a boy with a pointed chin and sea-green eyes. Then Hannah saw the blond hair and the smile, and while her rational mind said it could not be so, her heart knew without hesitation or doubt. She felt herself moving forward, her arms open wide.

“Jennet.” The word caught in her throat in a great rush of tears. “Jennet.”

“Aye, it's me.” She pulled the bonnet from her head with an impatient yank to show off a head of short-cropped curls as yellow as tow.

“Hannah Bonner, why do you look so surprised? Have I not written a hundred times at least that I'd come one day?”

Others were running up now, Gabriel and Annie first and foremost with what seemed like half the village streaming behind them.

“And what great adventures we'll have,” Hannah finished for her. “I've been waiting for you, cousin, and I didn't even realize it.”

“I see you brought the doctor with you too,” Curiosity said, coming forward now to catch Annie before she ran into the two women and knocked them over.

“And Luke.” Jennet looked over her shoulder. “Here he comes now, with Simon Ballentyne. Hannah, you'll remember his great-granny, Gelleys the washerwoman.”

“I remember a Thomas Ballentyne too,” Hannah said. “It was on his horse I first came to Carryck.”

“Simon's uncle, aye.” Jennet laughed. “Everywhere I go I drag a wee bit of Scotland along. Like cockleburs.”

“But how are we going to feed them all?” Annie wailed, and they were laughing still when Luke Bonner swung down from his saddle.

After Elizabeth greeted Luke and Jennet and the rest, she stepped back and watched, her hands pressed to her cheeks to keep herself from weeping. In the center of the crowd Hannah stood between Luke and Jennet, laughing and talking, touching one and then the other while Annie and Gabriel capered from person to person like puppies.

“Where are Richard and Ethan?” Elizabeth asked this question out loud and was surprised to get an answer from Lily, who had come up behind her.

“They went straight to the house.”

“It looks like the whole village is on its way,” Elizabeth said.

Lily made a sound in her throat that meant she would not take the trouble to correct her mother's exaggeration. Elizabeth glanced at her younger daughter in surprise and saw many things there: joy and disappointment at odds, and frustration.
Like a child left out of a party with no chance of gaining an invitation,
Elizabeth thought.

“I'll go fetch Da and the others.” Lily turned away, flinging back the words over her shoulder. A challenge, and one Elizabeth must meet.

She had to run to catch Lily up, and then she walked beside her daughter in silence. Little by little the laughter and voices faded away behind them to be replaced by the sounds of water and wind moving through the corn and all the noise of the woods on a late summer day. Little by little Lily's pace slowed to something close to normal, and Elizabeth was glad of it; she found herself a little short of breath.

When they had got as far as the strawberry fields without talking Lily stopped suddenly, folded her arms across her waist and looked down the mountain toward Paradise.

“Da will be glad to have Luke home.”

“Yes, he will.”

“They'll go off with the men to talk about war and Hannah will go off with Jennet and I'll be left behind with the old women, as I always am.”

Elizabeth bit back a smile. “They have a lot to talk about, it's true.”

“Sister could have talked to me,” Lily said, turning toward Elizabeth. Her face was flushed with color. “Why wouldn't she talk to me? I'm not a little girl anymore. She thinks of me as a child, you and Da think of me as a child. But I'm
not
. At my age Sally had two children.”

It was a discussion they had had so many times in so many ways. From long experience Elizabeth knew that there was nothing she could say at this moment that would soothe this unhappy daughter, who had longed for one thing alone and now could not have it.

Elizabeth understood too well; she had lived all her own girlhood with a family whose loving concern had tied her down as surely as ropes. She had been the bookish cousin with too many opinions and too little income of her own, sometimes amusing in her own way but more often irritatingly informed and vocal. She had left that world behind and come to this one, as Lily wanted to leave here and find a place of her own and the life she wanted.

It is only a delay,
Elizabeth promised her daughter silently.
Just until it is safe to let you go.
It was a sentence she repeated to herself whenever she looked at Lily, but one she tried not to say out loud, because an argument would follow as surely as thunder followed lightning. So she told herself what she could not say to her daughter:
Better unhappy than dead.

After a moment they started walking again.

Lily said, “Did you know about Jennet and Luke?”

“Of course not,” Elizabeth answered shortly. “I would not have kept it to myself if I had known they were coming.”

“No,” Lily said impatiently. “Did you know about
them
?”

Elizabeth pulled up in surprise. Her first inclination was to ask Lily to explain herself and then she saw the two of them again in her mind's eye: Jennet's eyes flashing down at Luke as he stood next to her horse. Something there beyond friendship, a tension as fine and strong as wire drawn out and out over the hottest of fires.

“I know of no connection between them,” Elizabeth said, more slowly. “Jennet is recently widowed, and she hasn't seen Luke in such a long time. I don't think it's
likely . . .”

She let her voice trail away because Lily was looking at her with one eyebrow raised, as she herself looked at children when they worked too hard to make reason out of fancy.

“Neither of them has ever written or said a word to me about a connection,” Elizabeth said finally. “Nor has anyone else.”

“Well, there's one there now,” Lily said.

Elizabeth could not correct her but neither could she ask all the questions that came to mind, and so she was silent.

She found Nathaniel by himself rumbling through the baskets in the workroom. “Am I glad to see you, Boots.” He thrust a bloody hand toward her. “I'm no good at bandages. Can you tie this up for me?”

“You're no good at stitches either,” she said, catching his hand to look more closely at the gash that ran just below his knuckles from thumb to little finger. Blood trailed down and over the Kahnyen'kehàka tattoos that circled his wrist.

He put his head down next to hers to look at the wound more closely. “It's just a scratch. I already cleaned it out, so bind it up for me now and let me get back to work. We were in the middle of bringing down that dead oak on the other side of Squirrel Slough.”

Elizabeth touched her forehead to his and looked him in the eye. “Nathaniel Bonner,” she said. “I want you to listen to me very closely. You need stitches or this wound will not close properly, and you know it very well yourself. You must go to Hannah or Curiosity—that much you may choose.” Then she pressed a piece of linen to the wound and began to wind it firmly.

He pushed out a frustrated sigh that rippled through the muscles in his shoulders and down his arms, giving in without more argument.

“And there's company coming,” she added, tying off the linen and avoiding his gaze. “You'll want to be here.”

A little spark of interest replaced the resignation in his expression. “Good company, I hope.”

“The very best,” Elizabeth promised, and kissed him on the forehead. He pulled her closer with his free arm around her waist and kissed her properly before he let her go. He smelled of honest sweat and pennyroyal ointment and pine tar and blood, and his mouth tasted of mint. Then he swung her around to pin her where she stood, his arms stemmed to either side of her head. It was one of Elizabeth's greatest pleasures in life, to have her husband catch her up against a wall to kiss her. He knew this very well, and he used it now to his advantage.

“Are you going to tell me or will I have to tease it out of you?”

“Promise me first that you'll let Hannah see to your hand straightaway.”

He grinned at her, a flash of teeth that made him look half his age and up to no good, her wild backwoodsman of a husband, too clever by half.

“I promise you nothing but a good tickling, Boots, unless you speak up right this minute.”

She put her hands against his chest, but she did not bother pushing; he would let her go when he had enough of this, and not before. “All right, a hint then. Who would you like to have here with us more than anyone else in the world?”