Into the Wilderness (64 page)

"It
went on for a long time before I took real note of what was happening. She
wanted to be called Sarah, and if I forgot and called her by her Kahnyen’keháka
name she would get pretty mad. I remember my mother asking once how the Mohawk
keep raccoon out of the corn and Sarah just looked at her with a blank face,
and then claimed she didn't remember. And then one day she wouldn't answer me
if I spoke to her in Kahnyen’keháka, and I suppose that's when I couldn't
pretend anymore.

"It
was about that time, maybe three years since we had settled down at Lake in the
Clouds, that Sky—Wound—Round took his people back to Barktown to rebuild it.
Just after the war had quieted down, it was. Schuyler gave them safe
passage—the Wolf and the Turtle and a few Bear clan, they went back to the Big
Vly in the spring. It was the first Sarah had seen of her mother or her people
in all that time. She was glad to see them, no question, but in the end she
didn't want to be there, in the long house.

"But
you did?" Elizabeth asked.

He
said, "I did, at that time. You're wondering why I wanted to give up my
own place and take on her people when I had folks of my own, but don't know if
I can explain it to you. I guess the only thing I can say is that the life
suited me. And I was at that age where I didn't want to be living under my
father's rule. Now, you might be thinking that we get along fine, and that's
true enough. But I was a son then and now I'm a father myself and things look
different to me." He shook his head.

"Sarah
got what she wanted, in the end. Not so much because her will was stronger than
mine."

Elizabeth
made a small sound, and he grinned, reluctantly.

"But
because it wasn't clear we would have been welcome, anyway. Or that I would
have been."

"Wouldn't
have been welcome?" Elizabeth asked, surprised and more than a little
insulted for him. "After all the time you had lived with them?"

"That's
it, you see. Falling—Day had come back expecting to find her oldest daughter
with a child at the breast and she hadn't ever even shown the signs of starting
one. The Kahnyen’keháka take the business of getting children serious."

"What
did Sarah think of this?" Elizabeth asked, because it seemed the safest
thing to ask and also because she was truly wondering.

"I
don't think she much minded, to tell you the truth," Nathaniel said.
"She never held it up to me, never made any complaints. She wanted me, or
she wanted Lake in the Clouds. Whichever it was that was more important to her,
the result was we didn't go back to the long house.”

Nathaniel
had been talking calmly, this story with all of its threads unraveling evenly.
But there was a pause now, and Elizabeth thought that if she relieved him of
the responsibility, he would just stop and turn inward. He glanced at her from
the corner of his eye and sighed.

"Well,
I was angry. Although I wouldn't admit it to anybody, even myself I didn't like
the way things were going, and I didn't like Sarah much for keeping me there,
and I suppose I blamed her for not getting with child, unfair as that was. So I
started spending more time in the bush. Went farther afield every time I went
out, and stayed away as long as I could. Spent the season up here trapping with
Robbie the winter of '82, didn't get home until the spring. With a fine lot of
furs to show for my trouble but with a hatful of guilt, too, for leaving Sarah
alone for so long. Robbie had done some talking to me."

Elizabeth
had an image that was very real to her, of a younger Nathaniel, moodier and ill
at ease with himself spending long evenings in Robbie's company. She could well
imagine that Robbie had talked to him, sparing him little truth, but doing it
gently.

"He
sent you home to Sarah," she concluded for herself.

There
was a grim look to Nathaniel's smile. "That he did, with as much good
advice as he could stuff into my head."

"But
it didn't work?"

"It
might have," Nathaniel said. "I was willing to make some compromises
at that point. But no, it didn't work."

"Because?"
Elizabeth prompted, gently.

"Because
while I was gone Richard Todd had settled in to Paradise and built a fine
house, started doctoring and making a place for himself in the village."

He
was silent for a time, with no sign of what he was thinking with the exception
of the fluttering of a muscle in his cheek. Elizabeth had come to recognize
this sign, and knew that she had best leave him some room. When he looked at
her again, the old anger was back, uncompromised by all the years that had
passed since this hurt.

"I
saw right away what had happened, that she had fallen in love with the man. She
could never hide what she was feeling, not from me."

"But
why?" Elizabeth said. "Why, given what she knew of him, what she had
seen him do?"

"I
don't know. Yes, I do. At least some of it. Because he never chided her about
leaving behind the Kahnyen’keháka in her," Nathaniel said. "Because
he was a challenge." There was a long pause, filled with tension.
"Because he paid attention to her."

"Your
mother," Elizabeth countered. "She must have known, she must have
tried—”

“Oh,
she tried," he said easily. "And so did my father. But there wasn't
much to be done about it. They weren't obvious, you see. They didn't flaunt
anything. To this day, I don't think anybody in Paradise has any idea of what
went on.

"Curiosity
does," Elizabeth said quietly.

"Because
Curiosity was there for the first birthing," Nathaniel said. "Before
that point she knew as little as anybody else."

"Then
Hannah is in fact Richard's child?"

"No,"
Nathaniel said curtly. "She is mine. She was conceived the night I got
home from the bush, and nine months later Sarah brought her into the world.
Along with a son, who died in my hands." He sat up, his hair falling
forward, and he looked Elizabeth directly in the eye, but he didn't touch her.
"Hannah is my child, and I'll ask you kindly to take that as fact and
never question it. Can you do that for me?"

He
was looking at her impassively, but there was a wariness about him.

Elizabeth
nodded.

"Now,
you know about Sarah," he said, lying down again, next to her but somehow
not next to her any longer. "And it's time we got to sleep."

But
of course she didn't know about Sarah; she knew less of her than she had known
to start with. Still, it wasn't Sarah who mattered right now. Nathaniel needed
things from her that she could give him, at least for this moment, at least for
now: her silence and her acceptance. Although he did not invite it, Elizabeth
put her arms around Nathaniel and held him until she felt him begin to relax.
In time she fell asleep herself wondering about these wounds of his, and if it
might be in her power to heal them.

"I
wish that man would set still," Curiosity grumbled out loud as she bent to
pull on her shoes.

"I'm
too old to be running around this village ever time Dr. Richard Todd take it
into his little head to go hightailing it into the bush."

Galileo
stretched and yawned his acknowledgment, snapping his suspenders into place.
"I'll have the team ready in ten minutes," he said as he closed the
door behind him.

"You'd
think I was the only woman in this part of the world to have ever borned a
child," she called after him.

Then
she looked up, eyes narrowed, at Moses Southern.

"How
long she been at it?"

He
fingered his beard, and refused to meet her eye. "Since early this
evening."

"Hmmph."
Curiosity stood and stamped her feet one after the other to make her shoes sit
right. "Could go on all night."

"Did
the last time," Moses agreed. "How much you charge for a
birthing?"

"How
much a healthy child and your woman worth to you?" She didn't like the
man, and she wasn't about to make this easy on him, although she wouldn't have
turned down his request for help. Not that she expected to be paid. Moses
Southern would offer the judge something for her services, as if she were still
a slave. Without waiting for an answer, she lifted her chin toward the basket
on the table. "That belongs in the wagon," she said. "I have to
tell the judge I'm going."

Once
in the hall she relaxed a bit, and allowed herself a grin. She liked being
called on, and she liked especially the business of helping other women bring
their children into the world. This particular woman was one who needed some
talking to. It was exactly the opportunity she had been hoping for. Childbed
was just the place for some home truths.

The
judge answered the knock at his door immediately. When he saw she was dressed
to go out, he raised an eyebrow in question. Since his daughter's elopement
and, more recently, the realization that Elizabeth was not going to appear in
court as she had been requested to do, he had been keeping to himself. There
was the smell of brandy about him. Curiosity's nostrils flared, and he drew
back a step.

"Mistress
Southern's time has come," Curiosity informed him.

"Richard
isn't here to attend her."

"No,
sir, he ain't."
Out in the bush,
running after another man's woman
, Curiosity thought.
And shame on you for letting him go after that daughter of yours.

"Who
will cook our breakfast?" He looked down at her blurry eyed. Curiosity
could see that he would sleep through the morning and never miss his breakfast;
he had been drinking for days. She wondered if she should take the time to talk
some sense to this man, and then put the thought aside. Wouldn't do any good
anyhow.

"My
Daisy will see to it that you and Julian are looked after."

He
nodded, and turned away from her. Then he turned back, suddenly.

"Did
you know?" he asked. "Did you know about her attachment to
Bonner?" It was the first time he had asked her outright.

"She
never said his name to me," Curiosity said, looking him straight in the
eye.

* * *

In
the wagon, she laid a hand on her husband's arm. "Stop by the Witherspoon
place."

"What
for?" asked Galileo. "What're you plotting, woman?"

She
grinned. "Why, a birthing is a long business. I need some help. Thought
mayhap Miss Witherspoon would like to lend a hand."

He
grunted. "I see through you."

"But
she won't," Curiosity said. "Not until it's too late."

"Why
not let these people sort things out for they selves

"’Cause,"
she sniffed. "I cain't. Wait and see, Leo, if it ain't worth our trouble
to do what we can for Elizabeth when she ain't here to look after her own
interests."

"You
think she willing to buy them Glove boys free, you might be disappointed."

"Mayhap
I will be," Curiosity said. "But I doubt it. That girl has got a good
soul."

* * *

Moses
Southern was waiting for them when they pulled up. He looked surprised to see
Kitty Witherspoon with them, but just as he was about to comment there was a
wavering cry from the dimly lit room behind him and he half turned, looking
over his shoulder. His dogs whimpered and pressed close to his legs, and he
pushed them off with a curse.

"Are
the children here?" Curiosity asked.

He
shook his head and gestured with his chin down the track to the neighbor.

"You
go on now," she said to him. "Go on over to Axel and set in front of
the fire, Mr. Southern. We'll send word over when the child come along."

Moses
Southern was surely the sourest human being the Lord had ever seen fit to blow
his breath into, Curiosity was thinking. He was looking up at her with his lips
sucked right into his mouth, his mean little eyes narrowed down tight. He
turned his attention to Kitty Witherspoon, who stood just behind Curiosity with
her arms folded and her chin tucked down to her chest.

"Miz
Witherspoon, don't you let her go talking no nonsense to my wife, now," he
said as he reached behind him for his cap, which he pulled down hard onto his
forehead.

There
was a look on Kitty's face, just one step removed from disgust. It couldn't
have been clearer if the girl had spat on the ground in front of Moses Southern
and cursed in his face. But he was looking elsewhere. Curiosity put a long,
cool hand on the girl's arm to keep her still.

"Mr.
Southern, don't you worry none. When the urge to talk comes upon me, I'll call
on the Lord instead."

With
a grunt, he turned and stamped away, splattering mud with each kick of his
heavy boots.

"That
man has got the temperament of a wasp—stung mule," Curiosity muttered as
she took her basket from Galileo.

Inside,
the small cabin was poorly lit by a sluggish fire that cast shadows in jagged
shapes. There were two rooms, separated from each other by a faded calico
curtain washed almost to transparency. Near the hearth laundry had been hung to
dry: a little girl's dress, some mismatched stockings, a pair of longjohns,
more patch than anything else. From the rafters hung a few ragged bunches of
wildflowers dried to gray and dust along with the meat and the corn. There was
the reek of salt pork and cabbage and vinegar, tallow candles and swaddling
clothes left too long without tending. From the door Curiosity could see Martha
Southern in bed in the second room, the great mountain of her belly rearing up
and dwarfing the round face, streaked with sweat and blotched red and white.