Fire Along the Sky (56 page)

Simon shot her a narrow look. “Wilde will survive.”

Lily snapped at him. “I was thinking of my brother.” And it was true, in part.

At that he fell silent for a while. Then he said: “Do you want me to go back to Nut Island, to see if I can be of any help?”

Since Luke's letter had come, that thought had occurred to Lily more than once.

“My mother would like it,” she admitted. “If you went, she'd feel better about Daniel. And it would mean she could stop worrying about me. About us.”

Simon said, “And you, Lily? Would you like it?”

She stopped then, and wrapped her arms around herself. “If I thought it would help my brother, I would let you go and not say a word. But no, I wouldn't like having to worry about both of you.”

He raised a hand to run a callused thumb along the line of her jaw, and then he leaned down and kissed her. A simple kiss, soft and sweet. Nothing of lust in it, but a strong, simple affection that made her sway toward him.

He said, “You only have to ask, Lily. You know that.”

They had stopped where the woods gave way to the Todds' pasture, at the very spot where shadows gave way to light. Lily pressed her forehead to Simon's chest and nodded, glad of the bulk of him and the warmth and his smells. Pressed against him like that she felt the moment his attention shifted, felt the tension that ran through him.

“What?” she said, not looking; not wanting to let the moment go.

“Wilde. There.”

She made herself look, then. A horse stood at the fence that surrounded the kitchen garden, an animal she knew: the old gelding that Joshua Hench kept at the smithy and rented out now and then.

And Nicholas Wilde, taking a sapling from the pannier, its root ball wrapped in burlap and twine.

“Paradise Found,” Lily whispered, and felt Simon jerk in surprise.

“The tree,” she said. “He named the apple Paradise Found. He has—” She swallowed hard. “He had great hopes for it.”

Callie had appeared in the open kitchen door, and even at this distance some things were clear: the fists wound in her apron, the pale oval of her face, the slope of her shoulders.

“He's come to tell her goodbye,” Simon said. “You should take your leave of him too.”

It cost him a great deal to say that, and Lily was thankful. She squeezed his hand, and smiled at him.

“I won't be long,” she said. “I promise.”

It was no more than five minutes' walk to the kitchen, but by the time she got there Nicholas was already leaving, his expression as still as stone.

He stopped on the step, and would not meet her eye.

“You're going away.” It wasn't a question, and he made no move to answer her. The other things she might have asked, about his plans, about Jemima, those questions filled her mouth like bitter vetch, but she swallowed them.

Nicholas studied the hat in his hands for so long that she thought, just for a moment, that he might have changed his mind. Then he walked away without another word, lifted himself into the saddle, and rode away.

The kitchen door still stood open. Lily heard the sound of weeping, and in counterpoint, Curiosity's voice, the low crooning tone she used with hurt things.

What Lily wanted to do was to turn around and run away, but she forced herself up the stairs and through the door, and when she had closed it behind herself and turned, Callie flung herself into her arms so violently that she lost her balance and slid to the floor.

Callie's thin shoulders trembled. “I'll never see him again.” Her face, pressed hard against Lily's shoulder, was hot with tears and wet, but Lily heard every word clearly. “I'll never see my father again.”

Curiosity stood just a few feet away, holding Martha to her, rocking the child silently.

“You don't know that,” Lily said, and heard the tremor in her own voice and, worse, the lie threaded through the words. But when she opened her mouth nothing else would come out. “You can't know that.”

“But I do,” Callie moaned. “I do.”

Elizabeth had always thought that she would one day make a sharp old woman, quick of wit and tongue, unflinching; silly young women would fear her, and with cause. She would model herself on her aunt Merriweather, she had always told Nathaniel. He had smiled at that and never corrected her, no matter what doubts he had. Now she wondered if she could live up to her aunt's stern example; it seemed to her that with every year she was a little more scattered, softer, unable to strike out, even when it was necessary.

To her daughter she said, “Tell me again what Nicholas said.” Supper had come and gone and they sat together around the hearth. Many-Doves was sewing moccasins to send to Nut Island for her son; she never spoke of Blue-Jay, but she never stopped working either, and Elizabeth had the sense that soon she would just leave the mountain and walk north, until she found him.

Something Elizabeth thought of doing, now and then, without any real hope that such a thing might be possible.

Lily took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead with three fingers stained indigo blue. “I wasn't there,” she said again. “But what Curiosity told me was, Nicholas is going to find Jemima. Because of the child. Otherwise he would just let her go, that's what he said.”

“But Curiosity didn't believe him,” Nathaniel said, to no one in particular. “I sure don't.”

“No,” Lily agreed. “Curiosity didn't believe him and neither did Callie nor Martha.”

Gabriel sat at Nathaniel's feet, uncharacteristically quiet, turning a bit of wood in his hands one way and then the other. Elizabeth saw Nathaniel taking the boy's measure and coming up short.

He said, “You've been sitting on something all day, son. You might as well spit it out.”

Elizabeth knew her youngest child's expressions as well as she knew the shape and texture of her own hands, and she did not like what she saw in his face. Nor did she like the uneasy looks Annie was sending his way.

He said, “Didn't Jemima go south?”

Elizabeth caught Nathaniel's eye and saw that he knew where this was going, though she herself only suspected.

“She did,” he said. “Mr. Stiles saw her in Johnstown.”

Gabriel raised his head and looked at his father. “Nicholas went west,” he said. “I saw his tracks all the way over past the Big Slough. Fresh too. Maybe a couple hours old.” And then, in an afterthought he turned to Many-Doves. “I was by myself,” he said. “All day.”

If not for the seriousness of the situation, Elizabeth might have been charmed out of her worry by her son's courtly manners: he meant to absolve Annie, and spare her the trouble he was calling down on himself. Annie's tense expression was replaced by something new: satisfaction, thankfulness, affection.

It was an old problem: Gabriel roamed far beyond the boundaries that had been set for him. He was not a rebellious child by nature, but there was something in him that just could not comply with restrictions on the way he moved through the world. Many-Doves looked up from her sewing, looked directly at Elizabeth, and inclined her head.

If she were to speak now, Elizabeth knew what she would say:
You can no more fence this child in than you could a young wolf. It is in his blood.

It was true that more than any of the other children, Gabriel had his grandfather Hawkeye's wandering ways. It would take strong rope to keep him on the mountain, and knots as yet unknown to man. Nathaniel was thinking the same thing; she could see the resignation and a little pride, too, in his face.

Lily just looked confused, and very tired. There were circles under her eyes, and a trembling in her hands when she reached for her teacup. Elizabeth saw those things and understood them, or thought she did. She reminded herself of her resolution to stay out of Lily's affairs of the heart.

Nathaniel said, “Headed west, was he?”

Gabriel pushed out a relieved sigh, and he nodded. Now that he had confessed to his wandering without causing an outcry, he perked up. He said, “I followed him a few miles, and he never turned south. He was headed into the bush. Why did he lie about where he was going?”

This question he directed to his mother, but she had no answer for him, or none that she would speak out loud. Elizabeth leaned over and brushed a pine needle from Gabriel's hair.

“I'm not sure,” she said. “But tomorrow your father will see what he can find out.”

Lily jerked out of her daydream at that, hearing the things Elizabeth had not said, had scrupled to say out loud.

“Da,” Lily said, but he only shook his head at her, gently.

“We'll see what we see,” he said quietly. “It's time you were off to your bed, Lily, and sleep. And correct me if I got this wrong, but ain't tomorrow the last day of school?”

It was almost comical, the way Gabriel and Annie tried to hide their pleasure as they assured him that he was right, school was about to go into recess as it always did at planting time. If not for fear of hurting their teacher's feelings, she knew they would be dancing around the room.

What they didn't realize, what she wouldn't tell them, was that she was looking forward to the end of the school term as much as they were, maybe more.

Many-Doves was studying Elizabeth thoughtfully, something that did not escape Lily's attention. She turned to her mother, her brow drawn down to put a crease between her eyes.

“Don't worry about me, daughter,” Elizabeth said, answering the question before it was asked. “I'm just a little tired. It has been a difficult spring.”

But some suspicion had been aroused in Lily; Elizabeth smelled it rising off her skin like sweat. She got up from her chair and leaned over to kiss her daughter, pressing her nose into the hair at the crown of her head. She smelled of herself, of the little girl she had once been and would always be; of the pigments she ground for her paints, of charcoal, of lavender water. Of Simon Ballentyne.

“My sweet girl,” Elizabeth said. “You need your sleep. Go now.”

Over the years Elizabeth had never had a student, no matter how disciplined or eager to please, who was able to concentrate on work on the last day of school. Long ago she had given up trying to instill some order into those few hours. Instead she let them bring treats—dried apple rings, fried bread dough dusted with maple sugar—and was satisfied if the day ended without blood loss or broken bones.

They were full of the spring, like sap that must run and run. While the children made piles of books and slates and wiped tables and swept the floor, they talked and sang and told stories and argued. In Elizabeth's hearing they did not talk about the latest scandal in the village, or at least not about Nicholas and Jemima Wilde; they knew how far her goodwill went, and when it was dangerous to test it.

They did tell her, she let them tell her, about Mr. Stiles and his nephew, a thirteen-year-old boy called Justus Rising. Justus had already won many admirers among the children, who were eager to share their enthusiasm with Elizabeth: Justus could touch the tip of his nose with his tongue, his hands were so flexible that he could bend them in half across the palm, he knew the whole Bible by heart, backward and forward, begats and all. He was strong enough to have wrestled all three of the Ratz boys to the ground at once, and he had lost his parents when they got on a ship that was overrun—by pirates—between Brunswick and Boston.

Elizabeth, who had personal experience of pirates and privateers and the gradations between, kept her doubts and her smiles to herself.

“An orphan. He's got something in common with Callie and Martha, then,” said Henry Ratz, and a hush came over the room. Not out of respect for the girls—Elizabeth was too familiar with the ways of children to tell herself that—but because they knew she would not approve of the topic of discussion.

She straightened from the pile of primers she was counting and looked around at them.

“An orphan is most usually understood to be a young person who has lost both parents. Callie is not an orphan, nor is Martha,” she said. “And I will remind you that you may someday need goodwill and generosity of spirit as much as they do now.”

And yet she was relieved that the girls had stayed away from school today. She was relieved and the Ratz boys were disappointed, no doubt: she kept an especially sharp eye on them, and reminded herself of the cheerful thought that Jem would not be coming back to her classroom in the fall.

None of them would, not to this classroom. When school started after the harvest, this little cabin would be empty again, and the children would be sitting on new benches in the schoolhouse in the village. Whether or not she would be standing at the front of the room was a question she couldn't answer, just yet, though they asked her more than once.

When she had sent Gabriel and Annie ahead to Lake in the Clouds, Elizabeth went out and sat on the porch step, exhausted, relieved, and anxious all at once.

She had taught in this cabin for almost twenty years, and now that time was over. It was a strange idea, but right, too, somehow. And yet she was close to tears, and her hands trembled so that she wound them together in her lap.

Elizabeth was sitting just like that, her face turned up to the bit of sky the canopy of trees overhead revealed, when she heard someone coming up the path from the village. Nathaniel, she told herself, and even before the thought had passed she knew it was an idle wish. Nathaniel had left at first light to track Nicholas Wilde and might not be back for days. The man coming up the trail had a heavy tread, and he breathed as if he were not accustomed to the climb.

Before he came within sight she knew who it would be, and then he was there: Mr. Stiles, his black preacher's hat pulled down tight over his brow, his face bright red with exertion. There was a Bible tucked under his arm.

She should rise, of course, and greet him as he expected to be greeted, but Elizabeth felt a flush of anger: that he should interrupt these few moments of quiet and contemplation on her last day as the teacher of this school.

He stopped before her, and she saw his throat work as he swallowed once and then again. Then he dragged his hat from his head, leaving spikes of fine white hair that stood up like feathers on a fledgling.