Into the Wilderness (113 page)

Nathaniel's
hand on
Elizabeth
's
wrist pulled her up short. In a long and easy movement, he stood. "She's
my wife. She happens to be the judge's daughter, as well, but you can call her
Mrs. Bonner. I'll come out and talk to you, if you'll leave these people in
peace."

He
leaned over to talk quietly into her ear. "The treasury was bound to show
up sooner or later. Sit tight, Boots." Then he winked at Hannah, spoke a
quiet word to Galileo, and disappeared into the hall.

The
crackling of the fire in the hearth was all the sound in the room for a long
moment, and then Curiosity let out a great sigh. "Come on, now, there's
food here too good for the pigs. Manny, hand your plate down here, sugar, and
let me give you some of this beef. You won't get this good once you start
working down to the mill, let me promise you that."

Slowly,
the conversation turned back to the wedding and the upcoming school recital.
Elizabeth
gave her cousin
a grim smile.

"I
see that thy life in Paradise is not dull," he said. "Perhaps I
should not be surprised that thy brother does not wish to leave."

Once
again Elizabeth put down her fork. "Julian? Leave? Why should he?"

Samuel
shrugged. "I thought that perhaps I could convince thy brother to come
home with me, for I could use an assistant. But I'm afraid the life of a
merchant does not entice Julian."

"I
am surprised to hear of your offer," she said. "But more, I am
disappointed that he did not consent to join you. I think it would have done
him much good to get away from here."

Samuel
nodded thoughtfully, and then gestured toward Joshua and Daisy, who were
picking at their plates while they talked. "Dost thou know the proverb
about the two things that cannot be hid?"

Elizabeth
smiled. "Love, and a cough. I see the first here in evidence, but what has
that to do with my brother?"

"The
proverb was once longer, I believe: "Foure things cannot be kept close,
love, the cough, fyre and sorrow." I would say that thy brother burns not
with love, but with jealousy. Perhaps given hard work, and a purpose, he could
be saved."

"You
are a missionary at heart," Elizabeth said ruefully. "I only wish there
were some hope of success in this case."

"There
is always hope," Cousin Samuel said.

* * *

When
she finally went in search of Nathaniel, Elizabeth found him leaning against
the wall of the house staring at the night sky. She followed the line of his gaze,
leaning against his hard shoulder.

His
arm came up around her and she moved in closer, for it was truly cold.

"The
maples are turning," Nathaniel said.

She
let out a small laugh of surprise. "Can you see that, in the dark? Or do
you hear it?"

In
response he took her hand and pulled her down to the trees that stood on the
far side of the barn. In the dark, he reached up and pulled a leaf, which he
stroked across her cheek and then pressed into her hand. "Go have a
look," he said. "If you don't believe me."

"Oh,
I believe you," she said, pulling her shawl more tightly around her. Even
in the moonlight, she could see the set of his jaw, and the lines around his
mouth.

"Are
you worried about the winter?"

He
sighed, chafing her arms with his hands. "There's enough sign that it will
be a hard one, but no, I ain't especially worried about the winter."

Elizabeth
rubbed her cheek on his shoulder, drawing in his smell.

"Are
you going to tell me about our visitor?"

"O'Brien?
He's after the Tory Gold."

"That
much I surmised," Elizabeth said. "I gather you satisfied his
curiosity. I heard him ride off."

Nathaniel
produced a small snort of laughter. "I doubt that man has ever been
satisfied with anything. But I've quieted him down for the moment."

"Do
you think my father sent him this way?"

"No.
The judge and your brother won't be in
Albany
until sometime tomorrow, Boots. Unless they ran into O'Brien on the road, which
ain't likely." He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. "No,
it was the gold we spread around in Albany. The state wants it, but thus far
they don't have any clear claim to it."

"So
then we don't have to worry about him anymore."

"I
don't know about that," Nathaniel said grimly. He took her hand and they
started back toward the house. "I think O'Brien will stick around for a
while, at any rate. He took a room at the Pierces', and he's likely to try to
question you, so be prepared."

"I
am not afraid of him,"
Elizabeth
said.

Nathaniel
pulled up short, and leaning down, kissed her briefly. "I know you're not,
Boots, and that's what scares me. A little healthy fear is a good thing
sometimes, in a man or a woman." His hand swept down over the curve of her
belly, and up her back to pull her in closer. "There's been enough
leave—takings for a while."

Pressed
against him, Elizabeth felt a tremble in his arms. "I am not going
anywhere, Nathaniel," she said firmly, determined to keep surprise out of
her voice.

"That's
good," he said. "Because I wouldn't know how to go on anymore,
without you."

The
sound of the front door closing separated them. In the shadows, she made out
Joshua's solid form. He had his hat in his hands, and his expression was
guarded.

"Don't
care to interrupt," he said. "I'll come find you another time."

"Oh,
no," Elizabeth said, stepping toward the porch. "Please don't go. We
wanted to talk to you about Joe."

In
the faint light, Joshua's expression was unreadable. "Can you tell me how
he died?"

"You
know he's dead?"

Joshua
reached into the pocket of his coat with two fingers and drew out the bijou
Elizabeth had worn on a chain around her neck for so many weeks. The pale stone
in the center flashed like an eye in the moonlight. "If he sent me this,
he's dead. It was all he had to leave behind." There was a long pause, in
which Joshua looked thoughtfully at the small ornament in his palm.

"Do
you know, did he take a family name?"

Nathaniel
glanced at Elizabeth. "He introduced himself to me as Joe, no last name.
Did he tell you, Boots?"

When
Elizabeth confirmed that he had not, Joshua shrugged. "I was hoping he
might have left me that, too, now that I need one. He was my father, but I
guess you figured that out."

Elizabeth
walked up the porch steps and stood in front of Joshua. "It seems to me a
very great responsibility, to find a name for yourself. Perhaps your father
meant you to take on that task when the day came.

"I'll
have to think on it some," Joshua said.

Nathaniel
said, "Maybe we could go set in the kitchen and have a talk. You'll want
to hear what we have to tell you in privacy."

"If
you don't mind bein' kept away from the party—"

There
was a loud burst of laughter from the parlor, punctuated by Curiosity's voice
in a rambling scold.

"I
think they're managing without us well enough,"
Elizabeth
said dryly.

"Would
you mind if I asked Mr. Hench to join us? I would like him to hear this story.
too."

"That's
your decision," Nathaniel said.

Joshua
looked down to the cap he held in his hands. "Maybe you don't understand
this," he said, searching carefully for words. "Don't know why you might,
after all. But it's a strange thing, having decisions to make all of a sudden.
God knows I'm thankful, but it'll take some getting used to."

Settled
around the hearth in the kitchen, Elizabeth and Nathaniel told the story they
had to tell of Joe, how they had come across him and how he had met his death.
Elizabeth
cradled a cup
of warm cider in her hands, and watched the firelight flicker in the deep amber
fluid as she listened to Nathaniel tell the last of it.

"I
didn't know him very well, you understand," Joshua said quietly, when
Nathaniel had finished. "Me and Mama was sold away when I was little. But
I saw him now and then in the town, and twice a year on Sunday he had a free
afternoon. He walked a long way to come talk to me then, wasn't ever more than
an hour, 'cause he had to be back before sunset. Strange, how much you can miss
a body you never did see very much to start with. But I do miss him. The idea
of him."

Cousin
Samuel had been quiet through much of the story, but now he leaned forward, his
hands spread out in front of himself. While they were well acquainted to honest
work, they had little resemblance to Joshua's hands, heavily muscled, blunt,
and the dark skin seamed with scars.

"There
is an old saying that might serve well," he said. ""Grief will
not recall thy father to thee, but by thy conduct thou canst revive him to the
world.""

Elizabeth
felt Nathaniel's sorrow, usually held so tightly in hand, blossom suddenly up.
He flushed, perhaps with embarrassment, perhaps with new purpose. For a moment
Elizabeth
was overcome,
too, but with feelings of guilt: she had not understood, not really, what it
had cost him to have said goodbye to his grandfather and father on the same
day. To know one of them gone forever; and not to know if the other would ever
return. Under her folded hands, a sudden faint kicking, as if to scold. She
wondered if this child would read her thoughts as easily as its father did.

"Sometimes,
truth be told, I am angry at my father," Joshua said in voice so soft that
Elizabeth
barely heard him.

"That
he ran away?"

He
turned his head toward her slowly, and blinked.

"No,"
he said.

"That
he didn't go long ago, and take me with him."

They
were quiet then. There were no other sounds in the kitchen but that of the wood
hissing in the hearth, and the creak of the wind in the rafters, but it was not
an awkward silence. After a while it gave way to talk, the sort of easy talk
between men after a long day of hard work and a shared meal. They were that
comfortable together, talking of matters of the world, far away: plague in
Philadelphia
, and civil unrest in
France
; of
things closer to home: the weather, and the harvest, and signs of a hard winter
to come soon after.

She
might have had a share in the conversation. She knew that they would listen to
her; they would answer her questions and ask her opinion. And because she knew
this to be true, Elizabeth was content to sit and to watch their faces, and
listen.

An
impatient fall nipped hard on those September nights, and the village pushed
toward an early harvest. Deprived unexpectedly of her students,
Elizabeth
tucked up her
skirts to help pick apples and pears from the trees between the barn and the
corn. Finding a great deal of satisfaction in the filled baskets, she took it
upon herself to join Many-Doves and Hannah as they waded in the shallow waters
of the marsh, where they harvested rice and cranberries as red as rubies. On a
clear fall afternoon while Falling—Day tied standing corn together with strips
of rawhide to bring about the first drying of the cobs, Elizabeth picked the
beans that wound up the cornstalks, pausing now and then to look over the golds
and oranges and reds scattered in the forest canopy like candles against the
coming night. With Hannah she went deep into the woods to gather beechnuts
while squirrels chirred and barked overhead, leaping from branch to branch in
shivering outrage. As she had been in the spring, Hannah became her teacher
once again, pointing out the flocks of robins and chickadees gorging in
preparation for their flight south, half—built muskrat shelters woven with
cattails and bulrushes, a red—bellied snake working its way into an abandoned
anthill where it would sleep through the cold.

She
saw little of Nathaniel during the day: the season had begun, and the men went
out very early with the dogs. One of them was never far from Lake in the
Clouds; both of them were uneasy about leaving the women alone. Elizabeth began
to understand what a great hardship it was to have Otter and Hawkeye away. For
the first time she heard Falling—Day wonder out loud when her son would come
home, a question which much occupied Elizabeth, along with thoughts of Richard
Todd. The judge and Julian had returned from Albany with nothing to say about
their trip, its purpose or success, nor had there been any sign or word of aunt
Merriweather. O'Brien, who turned out to have the improbable first name of
Baldwin—promptly shortened to Baldy by Axel and his regular
patrons—demonstrated more interest in schnapps than he did in finding the Tory
Gold, and showed no inclination to leave Paradise. And the date of the final
hearing on the breach—of—promise suit approached. In an attempt to curb her
anxiety,
Elizabeth
spent her evenings preparing for the school recital, visiting her students in
their homes where she often joined in shelling beans while she listened to
recitations.