Fire Along the Sky (49 page)

Today they found her wrapped in a leather apron frowning at a line of glass beakers. This was such an interesting sight that Black Abe was forgotten for the moment.

“What are you making?” Martha was especially timid with Lily, but for once her curiosity got the better of her, and she came right up to the table. In the slanting light from the window her hair was as red as fire.

“Watercolor paint,” Lily said with a quick, sharp smile. “To see if I can get the color of your pretty hair down on paper. Or I would be, but I'm missing something.”

Some of the best stories about Lily had to do with when she was a reluctant schoolgirl in her mother's classroom. To this day the children spoke with respect about the schemes Lily had come up with to get out in the fresh air when she was supposed to be parsing French verbs or writing out arithmetic problems on her slate. And now here she was, always eager to be teaching the things she had learned in Canada to whoever might stand still long enough to listen.

She showed them how she meant to mix the oddest things together—gum arabic, strained honey, glycerin—to make the binder that was the basis of her watercolor cakes.

“But I've misplaced my crock of benzoate of soda,” she finished, looking around herself as if it might appear magically. “Or I left it behind in Montreal. In either case I can't finish without it.”

She saw the girls exchange meaningful looks.

Callie said, “There must be a hundred filled crocks in Dr. Todd's laboratory. Would you find some there?”

“Oh and,” said Martha breathlessly, as if to keep Lily from objecting, “we stopped to tell you that Black Abe is come.”

Lily might be distracted, but she knew what that meant. She said, “Well, then. When's the burying?”

“Tomorrow, I think,” said Martha, tugging on her plait so hard that the tender skin at her temple reddened.

Callie said, “Won't you come back to the house with us?”

For a few days now, it seemed to Lily, the two girls had been conspiring to get her to Curiosity's kitchen. She didn't know if this was because they had decided they liked Simon and wanted her to spend more time with him, or because they were bored since Hannah and Jennet and Ethan had all gone away, and wanted some excitement. Or maybe, it occurred to Lily, maybe they didn't like the idea that Lily was at odds with her mother, and had taken it upon themselves to draw them back together. Right now it could be all those things, and the arrival of Black Abe on top.

“Did Curiosity send you?” The question didn't come out the way she meant it to.

“We thought you'd want to know.” Callie looked indignant and Martha injured. Taken together that was strong medicine indeed.

Lily said, “Very well. Let's go see if there's any soda to be had.”

“Then you can get back to your work,” offered Callie.

“Yes,” said Lily. “Then I can get right back.”

Lily spent the walk from the meetinghouse to the doctor's place working out just the right thing to say when she came face to face with her mother or Simon. It was delicate business. She must find the words that would make them understand that she had neither forgotten nor forgiven, nor was she resigned to the situation as they had worked it out between them. Just the right words would make all that clear, and would make them understand even more: that she was not a child, and would not be treated like one.

But neither her mother nor Simon was in the kitchen, as she had thought they must be. Instead there was Sally, spinning directly from a fleece that lay on the floor beside her, while Lucy was busy with dinner. She was moving back and forth between setting the table and stirring the pot that hung from the trivet over the hearth.

“You looking for your ma?” Sally asked. “She supposed to be here for dinner, any minute now.”

“I'm not here to see my mother,” Lily said. All her good intentions went up in flame, just like that, and in their place she felt herself flush with irritation. “Why would you think I'm looking for my mother?” And she marched back out again, leaving the door open behind her.

“I suppose it was Simon she was hoping to run into,” said Lucy, and then she caught her sister's eye and they both giggled.

Callie said, “You shouldn't tease her so,” trying to look concerned and understanding and serious. And then all four of them broke down into laughter that drifted out the open door and followed Lily a good ways down the path to the laboratory.

Dr. Todd's laboratory, closed up for long weeks, was damp and dusty and it stank of sulfur and cloves, vinegar and herbs and chemicals. It took a quarter hour of looking to find what Lily needed and another quarter hour before she had found an empty jar, a cork that fit it, and a rag to wipe it out. She worked at the big table, in a spot she made for herself among the pots and bottles.

By the time she had found a funnel, the racing of her heart had slowed and she had a hold of her temper. Or enough of a hold to be honest with herself about a few things. First, that she must learn not to react to teasing. Second, more happily, that Simon had not been there to see her fluster. Third, she was hungry, and that everyone would be sitting down now in Curiosity's kitchen to a dinner of stew and new bread and dried peach compote. Fourth, that her own cold packed dinner was back in the meetinghouse, and finally: that they expected her to stay away, out of obstinacy, and hurt pride.

Lily did not like being predictable, but even worse was the idea that people found her amusing, a little girl to be chucked under the chin. Lily confounded by love. Lily out of sorts, because she couldn't control a man.

The logical thing to do, then, was to show them they were wrong. She would sit across the table from her mother and Simon Ballentyne and pay neither of them any particular attention; she would be polite but disinterested. All her attention would be paid to Black Abe, who must have a year's worth of news to share. Black Abe was why she had come, after all, and it made no sense to deprive herself of the pleasure of his storytelling.

Lily had just worked this out to her own satisfaction when a shadow fell across the door. A man-sized shadow.

Simon Ballentyne said, “They've sent me to fetch you to dinner.”

Lily took a very deep breath and counted to three. Then she gave him her most polite, most distant smile. “That's kind of you,” she said. “I'll be along shortly, as soon as I've finished here.”

She couldn't make out his expression in the shadows but he shifted a little where he stood: a man who had gone into the bush loaded for bear and found a fawn instead. She had hoped to put him off balance and understood now that she had disappointed him: he got pleasure out of putting her in a temper.

Lily smiled again, and perhaps that was the mistake.

“I'll wait,” Simon said easily. He leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms.

“You must do as you please.” And then, her voice shaking with the effort: “If you will wait, come in. You're in my light.” Then she looked up at him and saw the hesitation on his face.

“Unless my mother forbids it,” Lily added, and cursed herself for it.

Simon was working hard at keeping his temper too; she could feel him struggling with it. He cleared his throat. “You spilled some . . . what is that?”

She put down the crock. “It's benzoate of soda,” said Lily. “And if I've spilled some it's because you're in my light. As I've already pointed out.”

“Aye. Or perhaps it's just that you're nervous to be alone with me and your hands are trembling.”

She had picked up the bottle closest to hand and thrown it before the last word was even out of his mouth. It was heavy and rounded and it flew like a fat bird to hit Simon Ballentyne with a thump, right between the eyes. Then it broke neatly in half. The room filled immediately with the scent of rose oil, thick and sweet.

“Uffff,” he said, and took a step backward, his heel catching on the door swell. His arms pinwheeled once and then he sat, heavily, his feet inside and the rest of him in the mud.

“Oh,” said Lily, a hand pressed to her mouth. The sun was at his back but she could see a trickle of blood on his brow, and oil dripping down his face. His eyes were squinted shut, and his eyelashes were sticky.

Lily laughed. It was a mistake, she knew it, but she could not help herself.

Simon got up gracefully—some part of her noticed that, even now—and he used both hands to wipe his face, advancing on her as he did.

She stepped backward until she came up against the big worktable. To her right was another table, and to her left the reverberating furnace, like a great squat toad.

“You will tease me,” she said, and heard her own tone, half petulant, half laughing. “You know I have a temper.” And, pleading: “It's only rose oil, and the bottle was almost empty.”

“Only rose oil, is it?” He was close enough now for her to see the small crescent-shaped cut between his brows, and the smear of blood.

“Rose oil is good for the skin,” Lily said, leaning back.

“Well, then,” Simon said. “Let me share it with you.”

She flailed at him but he caught up both her wrists in one hand. The reek of the rose oil filled her nose and she coughed.

“Simon,” she said. “Simon, wait. Wait, I have to say something.”

“Go on, then.” He pressed a palm to her cheek and then began to rub the oil in with three fingertips. “What is it you wanted to say? I don't suppose you were about to apologize.”

She tried to lean away from the oily hand, coughing out a sound that was meant to be a “no” but sounded more like a laugh.

“Or maybe you just wanted to point out that you've got the better of me. Come in, you said, and in I came. So go on, then, say it. You got the best of me, Lily, and you always will. What else do you want? A kiss, is it?”

She might have denied it, or tried to. She might have, but Simon had already grabbed her up against him and given her what she hadn't asked for. A kiss saturated in rose oil and a flare of temper that came from them both and ignited where their mouths touched.

“What would my mother say?” Lily said.

He bit her lower lip and kissed her again.

She said, “You're to call on me on Sundays. We're to have a chaperone.”

Between kisses she said, “She might come up the path and see us, just like this. You with your hands on my—”

He groaned against her mouth, wrapped an arm around her waist. Then he stepped backward pulling her with him, kissing her as he went, until he was at the door. With a kick of his heel it slammed shut, and then he leaned back against it with her pressed all along the length of him, in a fog of rose oil and frustration.

“Lily Bonner,” he said, leaning down to look her directly in the eye. “I made a promise and I'll keep it.”

“Which promise are you talking about? The one you made to me, or the one you made to my mother?”

He shut his eyes. “Be sensible.”

She did the only thing she could think of doing: Lily grabbed Simon by the ears and pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him. She kissed him until he began to give in and then she kissed him some more. Then with a great groan he took her shoulders and held her away from him. Breathing as if he had just run a mile uphill, and how that pleased her.

“Come to dinner now,” he said. “And Sunday I'll call on you.”

Then he opened the door and went out, and left Lily in the dim, dusty laboratory.

Noses twitched and brows were raised, but nobody said a word about the fact that Lily came to the dinner table smelling just like Simon did: as if they had been rolling around in Missy Parker's rose garden in the full of the summer.

It was not like Curiosity to let such an opportunity go, but the subject was a somber one: tomorrow was the day that the bodies that had been waiting over the winter would finally be set to proper rest. In the ice shed behind the barn there were three coffins and in the village there were more.

“You going to start today?” Curiosity asked Black Abe.

“I don't know,” he said. “I smell a change in the weather.”

Curiosity looked up at him, her brows pulled down into a sharp vee of disapproval. “Why, Abe, I'm surprised at you. Wouldn't get much done at all if we let a little rain stop us, this time of year. Why, I seen Simon there hauling logs in rain so thick the oxen was almost swimming.”

“I'm a Scot, aye.” Simon grinned at her. “Bred to the rain.”

Lily made a neat pile of her pickled cabbage and then moved it to the other side of her plate, to keep herself from looking up.

Curiosity said, “I'd surely appreciate it if you got started today, Abe. We need to tend to our folks.” She was looking at the girls.

“Why, then,” Abe said. “I'll do just that.”

Suddenly everybody seemed to have something worth saying. They talked among themselves about the weather and graveyards and wasn't this stew tasty, Lucy's dumplings had turned out just right and pass them down, please, there was a little hole in Abe's belly that still needed filling.

Then Callie found her voice all at once. “But what about my pa?” she said. “My pa has to be there too.”

There was a small, shocked silence.

“But of course,” Elizabeth said. “Of course he must. We wouldn't go ahead without him, Callie.”

Tears were streaking over the girl's face. She sobbed, just once, but it was a sound so riddled with pain that Lily's own throat closed in sympathy. Martha looked just as stricken, and for a moment they looked to her like two little glass dolls ready to shatter.

“Callie,” Curiosity said. “I'ma go speak to your pa just as soon as I get up from dinner. You can come with me, if you like.”

“No.” The girl shook her head so hard that her plaits jumped. Next to her Martha had begun to weep too, but silently.

“Well, then I'll go on my own,” Curiosity said in her gentlest voice. “Don't matter none, child. Not a bit.”

“I'll go with you,” Elizabeth said quickly. “Would that be a comfort to you, Callie, if I went to see your father too?”

The girl drew in a long, shaky breath and closed her eyes. By the time she opened them again her expression had calmed, and she nodded.