Lake in the Clouds (90 page)

She ran her fingers over his face, traced his ears, cupped his scalp in her hands. In between kisses she said, “Your hair is growing back. I want to see what you look like with hair. Will you let it grow?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling against her mouth. “If you want it so, wife.”

She pulled away again. “Am I your wife now?” And felt the tightening in her chest to even say such a thing out loud.

He tilted his head and one corner of his mouth tilted too. “That is a question only you can answer, Walks-Ahead. Hannah. Are you my wife?”

To tremble in the heat of the day, as if a fever had taken hold of her so completely that she would never recover. He was watching her, waiting. A stranger still, and no stranger at all. She had never been more frightened or happier, more sure of what she wanted.

“Yes,” she said. “I am your wife.”

His smile was enough to calm the trembling in her, but then he started all over again, his hands and mouth and the simple strength in his arms, all for her. When he drew her down to the forest floor she went willingly, and when he touched her breast she arched up into his hand.

“Is there time?” she asked him, her voice breathless and hoarse in her ears. “Is there enough time?”

His mouth at her ear, warm and soft.

“There is time. If you want me, there is time.” His tongue moved against the pulse below her ear, along the line of her jaw to her mouth. A new kind of kiss, a promise of what was to come. His hand under her skirt, fingers trailing along her thigh to touch the aching place between her legs. A light touch, a question without words.

“Yes,” Hannah whispered. “Yes.”

In the morning Elizabeth woke thinking of Kitty, but went to find Manny and Jode, determined to have a frank conversation with them about their recent activities and their plans for the immediate future. If Curiosity was too busy to come up the mountain to speak sensible words to her son, then Elizabeth would do it for her. And there was the mystery of Liam Kirby to be solved, and Elizabeth was virtually certain that Manny could solve it, too, once she had him cornered.

But they were gone. They had eaten at Many-Doves’ hearth, thanked her politely, and melted away into the forest again.

“They’ll wait until the others are ready to travel west,” Blue-Jay informed her. He had that look of little boys who wanted to be included in an adventure and knew that it could not be: forlorn and wishful.

Many-Doves said, “They are afraid of your anger, and rightly so.”

Elizabeth went back to her own cabin and found Bump sitting on the porch with Nathaniel. He brought them hard news and Curiosity’s good bread to swallow along with it.

In the strong light of a perfect summer morning they sat and listened. Outwardly calm, Elizabeth wanted most of all to run away, to close her ears like a child in a temper, to shut out the words that she feared.

But for all his misshapen back and odd dress Bump was the
gentlest and kindest of creatures, and he told the story of Kitty’s last hours in such a forthright and simple manner that Elizabeth could take some comfort in it. Kitty had been an unhappy girl when Elizabeth first met her, love-struck and lonely, but she had died with her son in her arms and her husband beside her.

“She went easy,” Bump finished. “Curiosity said to tell you she was smiling.”

Nathaniel rubbed Elizabeth’s back and pulled her closer. In the very way he caught his breath she could hear how close he was to tears. Inside herself she could find none at all.

“And the rest of it?” Nathaniel’s voice hoarse with sorrow, for the girl he had grown up with and the woman she had become.

Bump twisted his shoulders right and left as if to relieve a cramping in his back. He told this story more quickly, his eyes scanning Nathaniel’s face as he spoke.

“Between the doctor and Curiosity, O’Brien didn’t stand a chance,” Bump said with a satisfied expression. And then, more cautiously, “He’s a rough sort, the doctor, and tightfisted with praise. Many times have I seen him drive Miss Hannah to distraction with his demanding and overharsh ways. But this morning he stood up for her like she was one of his own, though he was shaking with grief like a sapling in a storm. I thought you should know that.”

“Yes,” Nathaniel said. “I’m glad you told us.” He saw Elizabeth’s expression, the struggle there to give Richard Todd the credit that was his due. Whatever trouble he had been to them in the past, they would have to put that aside now. With his loyalty and service to their daughter Richard Todd had earned their respect, and Elizabeth must trust him to raise her nephew, because she had made that promise to Kitty.

Bump said, “Now I know you’ve been keeping away from the village for fear of the canker rash—”

“Nathaniel will be there at seven to hear O’Brien’s charges,” Elizabeth interrupted him, as near to rude as she ever came. Her color had risen, and her jaw set itself hard. It was the fear that did it, and still for that small moment, for one second that lasted far too long, Nathaniel hated his wife for letting her fear get the best of her.

“What I was going to say,” Bump continued evenly, “was
this. Young Ethan sends word. He hopes that you’ll come tomorrow to see his mam buried, and he asked me to say that while he hasn’t got the rash or any sign of it, he’ll stay away if you’ll only come, as Kitty would have wanted you there.”

The color left Elizabeth’s face so suddenly that Nathaniel feared she would faint. Then a shudder moved through her and she pressed both hands to her face. As she rocked forward a sob tore up from her throat.

Bump caught Nathaniel’s eye. There was something knowing in his expression, an understanding beyond judgment. He said, “I have messages for young Lily and Daniel as well.”

Nathaniel nodded, and drew Elizabeth up to him. “I’ll send them out to you.”

When she had wept as much as a woman can weep, Elizabeth looked to Nathaniel as she had just after giving birth: emptied of everything, reduced to her very essence.

She said, “Is he still here?”

“Out on the porch with Lily.”

For a moment he thought she might start again after all, but when a deep shuddering breath had left her she got to her feet.

“I regret that I did not go to Kitty,” she said, her face turned away from him. “But most of all I am ashamed.”

“Elizabeth.”

“Let me finish. I am ashamed that it took a little boy’s sorrow to make me understand what I have done. To you, most of all. I am sorry, Nathaniel. I am truly sorry.”

Tears pooled in her swollen eyes, but she pushed away his hand when he reached for her.

“I have let fear make too many decisions for me. For us. I hope that I find a way to make amends—”

“Elizabeth.” He lunged forward to grasp her by both wrists and drew her down to sit beside him on the bed. When she struggled he wrapped his arms around her and held her until she gave in to him.

He said, “Listen, listen to me. This is me, Elizabeth. Me. You don’t owe me any apologies or explanations. There’s nothing you’re feeling that I don’t feel. Every time one of the children walks around a corner there’s a fist in my gut until they come back again. When one of them sneezes or coughs, when
they sleep too soundly or wake up too slow, I think of Robbie and it seems I’ll choke on the fear.”

Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt and then relaxed.

“He was my son too. I miss him every day but I won’t let the missing of him get in the way of what I owe the living, and neither should you.”

“I want to talk to Bump,” Elizabeth said against his shirt. “I want to send Ethan a message.”

He was still sitting on the porch, but now Lily was with him and they had opened the book Gabriel Oak gave her across their laps. From the doorway Elizabeth listened and watched as they turned the pages.

“And this, A. Montgomery? Who is that?”

“Ah,” he said with a grin. “Friend Gabriel drew that down South Carolina way. That’s old Archie, a colonel do you see, by his uniform.”

“It says 1760,” Lily offered.

“Hmmm. So it would have been. When the Cherokee made short work of the militia at Echoe. That was just before Gabriel decided he’d had enough of the wars and got it into his head to strike out north.”

“When you came here?”

“For the first time, yes. That following spring. I expect you’ll come across some drawings of people you know in the next pages. And see, there’s Half Moon Lake, as ever was. When your grandfather and the rest of the settlers lived right on the shore.”

“Before the Kahnyen’kehàka burned the village,” Lily said. “And see here in the margin, he wrote ‘Alfred M.’ I think that must be my grandfather Middleton.”

“May I see?” Elizabeth’s voice broke as they turned to her, the old man and the little girl, both smiling in welcome.

They made room for her between them and Lily fussed with the old book until she was satisfied with the way it sat on her mother’s lap.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “That is your grandfather. He looks very young there. And Axel Metzler, my goodness.” She had
to hold back a laugh. “I almost didn’t recognize him. I never knew his wife, but I expect that must be her?”

She had directed the question to Bump, and he nodded. “So it is.”

“Look,” Lily said, with growing excitement. “Uncle Todd’s mother and father, it says so.”

“You must show him, Lily, he’ll be very interested.”

But the girl barely heard her in her growing excitement. She turned the page and stopped. “Oh,” she breathed softly. “Oh, Ma. Look.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, blinking in the sunlight. “I see. My mother.”

The likeness seemed to glow on the page. Dark hair covered by a plain Quaker cap, a heart-shaped face with wide-set eyes, a dimpled chin, and a shy smile. Just seventeen years old, by the date, newly married and separated from her family to follow her husband into the wilderness.

“You look so much like her,” Lily said. “Doesn’t she look like her mother, Bump?”

He made a whispery sound. “She does indeed, and so do you favor her.”

“Were you there when Gabriel drew this?” Lily asked, leaning across the book to look at him very earnestly. “Do you remember my grandmother Middleton?”

“Of course I do,” Bump said. “I could no more forget Maddy than I could forget my own mam’s face. She was a fiery spirit, full of life. Paradise was a different place once she went away.”

“Why
did
you go to England?” Lily asked, touching the curve of her grandmother’s lip as if she might somehow get an answer from the likeness on the page. And then to Bump: “Did she tell you?”

He looked a little startled at the idea. “Oh no. We came back to Paradise one spring and heard that she was gone, and so we never saw her again. I’ve wondered now and then what it was that made her go.”

“What’s this that Gabriel wrote beneath her name?” Lily put her nose right to the page and read aloud. “‘McB 4, 2, 1, 3.’”

“A quotation,” Elizabeth said. “I would suppose from
MacBeth
.”

Lily leapt up from the stair and dashed into the house, calling
behind her: “Wait! I know where it is!” And came back again before either Elizabeth or Bump could stop her.

She thrust the volume into her mother’s hands and stood jiggling with impatience until Elizabeth had found the passage.

Lily’s face was such a study in thoughtfulness and earnest concern that Elizabeth could not look away from her.

“Do you understand what it means?” Lily demanded, looking back and forth between them.

“I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said, although she had some uneasy sense that its meaning was there on the page if she only would study her mother’s image long enough. “But I will think about it.”

Bump smiled at her, his bright blue eyes lost in a sea of folds. “That would please Friend Gabriel,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

For the rest of the day Elizabeth could think of little else beyond the drawing Gabriel Oak had done of her mother. With one part of her mind she recognized that the conversation on the porch was no coincidence: Bump had arranged it just exactly that way, to give her something to distract her. With her head so full of her mother, Elizabeth had little time to reflect on Kitty or Hannah’s troubles with Judge O’Brien, on Manny and Jode, or even the scarlet fever.

When she told Nathaniel the story he was only vaguely interested. “I wouldn’t go trying to read something into a drawing more than forty years old,” he said, stopping to kiss her in case she took his common sense for a lack of interest. “But you fret away at that quote, Boots, if it makes you happy.” Next she went to Many-Doves in the hope that another woman would see what she saw: the questions raised that must be answered.

She found her in the cornfield, and so Elizabeth picked up a hoe and told the story while they cut weeds out from among the corn plants.

Many-Doves listened in her usual thoughtful way and said, “Gabriel Oak was one of the quiet ones, the Quakers. So was
your mother. It might have been some conversation between them that he wrote down, as your Lily does now. When she makes a drawing she writes odd words and sayings beneath it.”

This was true, and it gave Elizabeth pause.

“What were you hoping?” Many-Doves asked her.

“I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said. “Some understanding of my mother. I was so young when she died, I never thought to ask her any of the questions I ask myself now.”

Many-Doves stopped to smile at her, and then she held a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Walks-Ahead is bringing her new husband home to us, look.”

Elizabeth was almost afraid to turn, but she could not resist, and then she stood motionless among the swaying cornstalks, struck by the sight.

“When she is gone from us this is how I will remember her.” She said it aloud, and Many-Doves nodded in agreement.

“He will be a good husband,” Elizabeth said, because it was the thing she needed to hear, the only way to make the coming separation bearable.

Many-Doves was silent for a moment, only her eyes moving as she watched them come closer. “He is strong enough for her,” she said finally, touching on the truth that Elizabeth had not been able to find words for. Strikes-the-Sky was indeed strong in body and spirit and force of will, strong enough to be a husband to Walks-Ahead.