Fire Along the Sky (41 page)

On the way home, smiling to herself at nothing in particular, a series of sudden and unsettling realizations stopped Hannah in the snowy woods.

On her way home. She had a place that she thought of as home. Not her father's house or her grandmother's longhouse or her husband's village, but the house that was as much her home as Curiosity's. People had called it the doctor's place while Richard was alive and they called it that still, except that now she was the doctor. They gave her that title, some of them at least. In a village of whites, she was the doctor. She lived in a brick house with ten rooms, and fine furniture, and china, and beeswax candles. A library. A dispensary, filled with all the instruments a doctor might need. A laboratory, to experiment with whatever interested her by way of new herbs or medicines. A microscope.

Paradise had accepted her, because Richard Todd had made it clear that he found her worthy.

Hannah shook herself, and thought it through again.

The people of Paradise accepted her because they had known her all her life, as a girl and then as a young woman, at first carrying a basket for her grandmother or Curiosity, and later to bind their wounds and treat their fevers and to comfort their dying children. Nowhere else in the white world would such a thing be possible.

And then this idea, more surprising still: she was comfortable here, against all hope and expectation, and with that comfort came a new peacefulness and a quickening of the mind.

Sometimes when Hannah was looking at a sore ear or a gash or a listless child that needed worming, she thought of her journals and notes with regret, an emotion she had almost forgotten. Now and then she took down one of the books she had been left, an anatomy or a treatise on fevers, and found herself drawn in by the formal language of medicine. She understood that her native curiosity was coming back to life. The part of her that was a doctor approved; the rest of her, when occupied too long with these thoughts, began to hum with panic.

At times she saw glimpses of what life might be, here. With family around her, and girls to look after who were of an age to be her own daughters. She could live out her life like this or she could force herself back, all the way back, and live a woman's life.

Well nourished, her body had woken at a pace with her mind. At the last moon she had bled again, though it had been a year or more. To remind her: she could bear more children of her own, and raise them in the fine brick house. She could marry again; as strange as the idea might be, it had presented itself. In theory, she could marry again.

Or she could follow Dora Cunningham's example, and take pleasure and release where and when she pleased. It would be easier than finding the right husband in this white world.

There were trappers and backwoodsmen who would be glad of her, men who cared little what others might think of them. Such men often took Indian wives. Some of them helped themselves to more than one such woman at once.

It would shock her stepmother to hear such a thing said, but some part of Hannah did not dislike the idea. Such a husband would leave her with most of her freedom. He would spend a few weeks with her in the fall and spring; he would satisfy himself and her too, if she was lucky or demanding enough, and give her a child every year. Children three-quarters white, who would be accepted here in Paradise, begrudgingly, because they were Nathaniel Bonner's grandchildren.

She felt Strikes-the-Sky nearby. He had started coming to see her again, though not often. She wondered if he would go away for good, if she were to take another man. The laws of her people allowed her this, of course; she could have put him aside even while he lived. He had teased her about it now and then, when she was angry with him.

Look,
he said.
Look at Kicking Bird. Would he be a better husband, do you think? Such a small thin man as Kicking Bird, surely he is not so selfish and thoughtless as to eat the last of the red corn soup.

He said that with his arms wrapped around her waist and his mouth at her ear, tickling her with his breath while she struggled, saying ridiculous things until her anger slipped away from her. Then he would take her down to the furs and cover her until she forgot that she had come back to their hearth after working all day among the sick, to find that he had emptied the cooking pot.

Strikes-the-Sky, her husband. Gone now more than two years and still her tongue remembered and craved the taste of him.

As meat craves salt
. She said those words aloud and watched them drift off in the white cloud of her breath. In that substance she could see his shape, far off at the edge of the forest. His voice was much closer.

There are other kinds of food in the world,
he said to her.
Food without salt still fills the belly.

It was true. There were worthwhile things in the world, and many of them were already in her hands. A home, a family, work, people who needed her help. Good things that held her here as surely as a pinned fly. Life here would be safe, and comfortable, and sterile.

Hannah wondered how long she could manage such a delicate balance, and where she might land when she lost it.

That thought was in her head when she stepped out of the woods a hundred feet from her door, candle lit in the dusk, and saw the snowshoe tracks leading up to the door. Many people, come at once, and with them, she knew somehow, the answers to some of the questions that haunted her.

At first, the shock of what Lily and Simon had to tell them took all the air from the world. In Curiosity's crowded kitchen they sat, each of them, robbed of the ability even to breathe.

It reminded Jennet of the day her father died. At the time it had been a revelation to her, that words, insubstantial words that could not be held or touched, could have silenced a whole village.
The laird is dead.
Four words that first struck the world dumb and then drew a cry from it that must be heard in the heavens.

Hannah said, “Of course I will go to them.”

“I'll take her,” said Nathaniel, and with that the turmoil began. Nathaniel would go; Elizabeth would not have it, nor would Curiosity. Nathaniel had promised his wife never to set foot in Canada again, and she would hold him to that promise.

“And if it means hog-tying you,” Curiosity added with grim conviction.

Elizabeth said, “I will not lose both of you at once.”

And Lily: “He is not dead. No one said that my brother was
dead.
” That word, spoken for the first time, brought forth weeping: from Elizabeth and Lily and young Gabriel, who sat beside his father as still as stone while the tears ran down his face.

“I will go,” said Runs-from-Bears. His tone was steady and low and in response Elizabeth's tears welled again; in thankfulness, Jennet thought, and shame.

It was Simon Ballentyne who brought some quiet and calm back into the room. When he stood they turned their attention to him, and Jennet saw how much he was like his grandfather. The Ballentyne, they called him, capable and strong and clear-sighted in the face of disaster; her father's right hand for so many years.

Simon said, “The men who know the situation best are your son Sawatis”—he nodded to Many-Doves and Runs-from-Bears. “And the sachem Spotted-Fox. They know the island and many of the soldiers. Their faces are familiar but not suspect. They will do everything they can to see that your sons come home again hale. They have asked for Hannah, and she has agreed. Runs-from-Bears knows the territory better than I do, but I know it well. Will you let us take her to them?”

Jennet saw the words do their work. Elizabeth's face, cold and pale, Nathaniel's, alive with frustration and anger. Many-Doves, unreadable as ever to Jennet, and Runs-from-Bears, who stood behind his wife, unable or unwilling to sit.

Then Elizabeth turned to Lily. She said, “What do you think, daughter?”

Lily's hands were knotted in her lap. She studied them for a moment, and when she raised her head Jennet saw how much these months away had changed her. Lily said, “Simon is right.”

“I will travel on my own and leave first,” Runs-from-Bears said to Simon directly. “When will you follow?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “If you can be ready, Hannah?”

Hannah stood and smoothed her skirts with her hands. Then she managed a smile, a small one but a smile nevertheless. “There is a great deal to do, but yes, I think I can be ready.” And here was the surprise: it had taken such catastrophic news to finally wake Hannah fully out of her long sleep of loss and sorrow. For the first time since she had come home, they saw in her the girl and daughter and sister they had been missing. Because she had been called back to the war she dreaded, to care for young soldiers who needed her.

Nathaniel made a sound, a clicking like a death beetle in the wall, perceptible to nobody but the two of them. She closed her eyes, and summoned the image of her son to her mind's eye.

They worked late into the night to make things ready. Hannah was in the middle of it all. She moved from room to room, giving direction and answering questions. She examined all the surgical instruments and sent most of them to the smithy for Joshua to sharpen, as Richard Todd had trained him to do. She sorted through baskets of linen and set the little girls to tearing what she needed into serviceable pieces. She sent Gabriel and Annie out to borrow every mortar and pestle in Paradise, and then under Many-Doves' watchful eye, dried herbs and roots were ground and mixed and carefully wrapped in greased paper.

Blankets were stacked, along with all the warm clothing that could be spared. Ethan insisted that his new mantle be added to the pile, and the woolen stockings that Curiosity had made for him to take on his journey. Curiosity emptied her stores of everything sweet, sugars white and brown and maple, hard candy and gingerbread, dried apples and pears and cherries. Word had spread through the village and neighbors came with loaves of bread and dried meat and crocks of honey.

Sometime, very late, Curiosity took the little girls off to bed in spite of their protests. Gabriel disappeared and would not show himself until Curiosity gave up the idea of doing the same for him. Lily was glad to have the boy nearby; of all the family, Gabriel's pleasure at her sudden homecoming was unconditional, without unspoken questions or doubts.

Lily, working beside her mother, said very little. She did not trust her own voice; tears were a luxury that would have to wait until the work was done and the travelers were gone north.

Simon was going. Of course. She hadn't thought of it, and now there was nothing she could do to change that or even to delay it until they could speak to her parents of the arrangements between them. Not that there was any hurry, now. She felt faint at times, thinking of the things she would have to say, if only to her mother.

She would say them because she understood that to keep this to herself would build a wall that would always stand between them. She was frightened and ashamed to reveal the secrets she had kept, but they must be said.

For the first time since they came across Sawatis, Lily allowed herself to think of Nicholas Wilde and wondered what news there was; if he was even alive. Once or twice she felt Curiosity's sharp gaze on her, brimming with questions and worry. Lily forced herself to smile, and pinched her cheeks to give herself color, and turned her mind back to the work at hand.

In spite of everything she was thankful to be here, where she could reach out and touch her mother and talk to her about simple things. When he passed her Gabriel always stopped to wrap his arms around her waist and Lily swayed into his wiry embrace. Once he said, “Will Simon come back, sister?”

Before Lily could think how to answer, her mother spoke in her calm, even way. “I would suppose not,” she said. “His home is in Montreal.”

Jennet, who was near enough to hear this, cast Lily a questioning glance. Lily fixed her eyes on the chopping board and the knife, and refused to speak.

It was unfair to Simon, yes. She should speak up now and say:
he will come back, because I have asked him to. He will come back, because there is unfinished business between us.
But Lily needed time to think.
Coward,
she whispered to herself.
Coward.

Yet another knock at the kitchen door, and then standing there in the firelight reflected off copper and brass, Nicholas Wilde. He was carrying two stout brown jugs, and he looked a hundred years old.

Next to Lily her mother stopped what she was doing, as did Curiosity and Many-Doves and Jennet and Hannah. No doubt the mice in the walls had gone still too.

He was not dead, nor was he in prison; here was proof, but of what? His innocence, his duplicity, his poor judgment, his good luck. Lily realized two things: he was looking at her in a way that asked certain questions, and their connection was no secret to anyone in this room. How that had come to pass, she could only guess; she would rather cut out her tongue than ask, just now.

“I've brought cider,” he said, his voice low and familiar and vaguely trembling. “I hope it might be some help.” And he touched his brow and backed out of the kitchen, never quite there to start with. Before the door closed he caught Lily's eye directly and without apology.

“Welcome home,” he said, and closed the door.

Hannah said, “You never got my letter about the hearing, did you? Your paths must have crossed, yours and the messenger.”

“No,” Lily said with a forced smile. “I didn't get it. But there's no time for village gossip just now.”

What a poor liar she was, and they all saw it on her face. But they were good women and none of them meant to shame her, and so they turned back to their work.

Lily felt her mother's gaze on her, warm and concerned and disappointed, in her mild way. If she looked up she would see the same thing in Curiosity's face. Lily would have preferred anger and shouted insults to disappointment. She blinked the tears from her eyes and made careful examination of an imaginary nick on her paring knife.