The Endless Forest (78 page)

What she really wanted was an hour with Ben, to sit down with him someplace quiet. He would listen and then they would talk, passing ideas back and forth, and in the end she would have a better understanding of the choices before her. But right now there was no time. Right now there was Ethan, who walked beside her, his hands crossed at the small of his back.

He had been a quiet, loving boy and he had grown into a good man. Thoughtful, observant, generous to a fault, but always at pains not to draw attention to himself. He had married Callie for reasons that were still unclear to Hannah, but those reasons were also none of her business. They made a good couple, Ethan’s even temper complementing Callie’s easily roused anger. If there was no obvious passion between them, then that was nothing unusual. She knew married couples who never even looked at each other in public, and who had five and six children—evidence enough that in the privacy of their homes they could give and accept affection.

Without any discussion Ethan turned onto a path that wound its way through the farmsteads to the far side of the village, and Hannah followed. The wind brought them the occasional faint sound of laughter, music, the shrieks of children at play. And the first rifle shots. The sharp-shooting had begun. Ben was going to compete again this year, and she had wanted to be there to watch him.

Ethan said, “There’s nothing you can say that will surprise me,” and Hannah came up out of her thoughts with a jerk. He was looking at her with an expression that said he would have answers to his questions.

“What is she threatening?”

There was no help for it; she could not contain Jemima’s seething anger, or protect her family from any of what was to come.

Hannah said, “It’s about Martha and Callie.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all I know. That’s all she said. It was just—the look on her face. As if she were cherishing the idea of doing Callie—and you—harm. But she said nothing of the why or how. Why should she hate you so much? At first I thought she was bluffing to get her way, but afterward I couldn’t stop thinking about that smug look…. You’ll think I’m imagining things.”

“Oh, no,” Ethan said. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“Then what is there to do?”

“One thing I am certain of,” Ethan said, “and that is that she stays where she is. Hannah, you can leave this to me now. I’ll speak to her. I’ll take Nicholas to see her too, so you need never step foot in that room.”

Hannah said, “I promised Callie I’d take the boy, and I want to keep my promise.”

“Fine,” Ethan said, and after a long moment: “Thank you for bringing this to me first.”

“Do you—do you have any idea what it is she’s talking about?”

“Maybe,” Ethan said, his expression both closed off and distant. “Can you leave this to me now?”

“I can try,” Hannah said. “I’d like to find Nicholas and get this over with.”

Ethan nodded. “The sooner the better.”

D
aniel told Martha the story as best he remembered it.

A hot summer afternoon, the sky clear overhead and he was a pathfinder, leading a family of settlers deep into the frontier. His face painted with clay and chalk as his uncle Runs-from-Bears had taught him. He had gone off trail because there was a war party of Huron nearby, and it was his responsibility to see that the settlers’ scalps stayed on their heads where they belonged. He had a tomahawk, the one carved by his grandfather Hawkeye with a handle painted red. He used it to cut through the underbrush, and then stopped when he heard a step behind him. Maybe Aunt Todd had let Ethan come out to play after all. That would be good; it was hard work to ambush a war party by yourself
.

But then his sister stepped out onto the deer trail. His twin, determined as ever to have her part in his games, though she was a girl. It did no good to argue with Lily but if he worked at it he might lose her, and so Daniel let out a war whoop meant to startle her and ran off, pushing hard up the mountain, wondering if she would dare follow him if he went as far as Eagle Rock. When he glanced behind
him she was there, breathing hard, a scratch across her cheek, her mouth set in a line that meant she would get the best of him if she could
.

She kept up and never once asked him to slow down or stop. By the time they hit the first crest his lungs were burning and he knew hers must be on fire. He was already a head taller and hard-muscled, but she was smart and stubborn, and her size didn’t seem to slow her down. No matter what tricks he tried, she’d follow. Another time he could be proud of her, but just now he wished he could fly away and leave her behind, a little bit of a girl carrying a fistful of drawings. Drawings, in the bush
.

She was three minutes behind at least when he came out of the bush just under Eagle Rock, a boulder as big as a cabin jutting out of the mountain. Standing on top you could see the whole world: the village and Aunt Todd’s house on the hill where Ethan had been kept indoors to help her write letters, and a hundred, a thousand mountains. They came here sometimes with Da or Grandda or Runs-from-Bears, but never from below, as he had come this time with Lily following. From below it was crazy dangerous. A steep shifting incline, covered in many inches of loose scree
.

He would have set off in another direction but for the voices that told him there was somebody on the rock. Somebody who shouldn’t be there. His da would want to know about this and Daniel should run straight home to tell him, but first he needed to find out who was trespassing
.

He crept up until he could see over the edge, and then he stayed longer than he meant to, trying to make sense of what he was seeing: two people rolling around on the ground, one of them a woman, her skirts rucked up so that her legs were bare to the sun. The other a man, on top of her, his breeches down around his knees
.

Daniel dropped back down, eased himself down all the way until he was crouched under the ledge. He could still hear them, hear the noises they made. They were fucking, a word he had learned not so long ago from the boys in the village. Fucking on Eagle Rock in broad daylight, and who would take such a chance?

But he knew the answer. He had heard enough to recognize their voices
.

Then Lily was there. He had almost forgot about her. She stood heaving for breath, and before she could make a single noise he pulled her down next to him and put a hand over her mouth. If she hadn’t been struggling to breathe she would have bit him, he was sure of that
.

The voices were louder now, an argument so bitter that the taste of bile was in
the air. Daniel tightened his grip on his sister, feeling the jump in her pulse and his own
.

Will you be quiet?

When she nodded he took his hand away
.

It’s all right,
he whispered
. They’ll go soon.

Who?

Even whispered the names made her jump. Jemima was shouting now:
I’ll swear a rape.

The sound of a hard slap, and her laughter in response. It gave Daniel a sick feeling to hear that laugh, and still worse was what came next. They were struggling and the whole business started again, Jemima Southern and Liam Kirby fucking on Eagle Rock like snarling dogs
.

Lily didn’t know yet about fucking, and he wasn’t going to tell her. He pressed her arm hard to keep her quiet
.

It seemed to go on forever and then the sound of Jemima’s laugh came again, sharper and shriller, like the hunting cry of a falcon. Then silence. It seemed that one of them must have gone away, but there was no way to be sure. Daniel wondered how long they should wait, when it would be safe, and with that thought came the rattle of scree
.

Jemima stood in the sunlight looking at them where they crouched under the ledge. Her lower lip was bloody and her breasts free. Daniel looked away and Lily took that as permission to fling herself at Jemima
.

And from there things went from bad to worse
.

Daniel’s story took no more than ten minutes. When he had finished he took Martha by the hand and they went into the woods. She allowed herself to be led to a fallen tree, and she sat there beside him.

After a while she said, “I was conceived that day.”

“I think so, yes.”

“She threatened you.”

Daniel nodded. “But none of that came to anything. There was no real harm done.”

She turned to look at him. “Why did you tell me this?”

“I haven’t told you all of it, yet,” Daniel said. “There was one more thing. Something I haven’t told anyone, not Lily or my parents. Not anyone.”

“Do I want to hear this?”

“Most likely not, but I have to tell it.”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Lily’s ankle looked to be broke, and so I set off to get help and I ran as hard as I could. You know the beaver pond where the stream drops real sudden about six feet? The little waterfall, we used to call it, about halfway between here and Lake in the Clouds. When I got that far I caught my foot on a root and I fell so hard I knocked the breath out of me. Took me a couple minutes to get moving again, but before I could go I heard her. Jemima. She had climbed down to sit on the edge of the pond, and she was weeping. The sound of it surprised me so that I couldn’t help myself; I went around to the side where I could see her better, and she was sitting there, bent over for weeping. It was like her heart was being torn out of her, she was shaking and crying so hard.”

“What did you do?”

“I am ashamed to say that the first thought that went through my head was to chunk a rock at her, I was that mad. But I was too worried about Lily, so I ran on home and got Runs-from-Bears. And still I couldn’t get it out of my mind, Jemima weeping like that. It got all mixed up in my head with the things she said about Hannah.”

They sat there in an awkward silence for a while, and then she let out a sigh. “I always had the idea that maybe there was something once between Jemima and Liam Kirby that wasn’t ugly. Just for a day or even an hour. I don’t know how I held on to that idea all these years.” And then, a little sharper: “What were you thinking, that I’d forgive her everything because she shed tears?”

“No,” Daniel said. “I’m just hoping you won’t hold it against me that I was there that day.”

By the time they got home the first fireflies had begun to float over the meadow. The smell of ripening strawberries was in the air, and Martha thought of the bears that would soon come to eat their fill. She would have to keep Hopper on a line for fear he would try to chase them away.

Daniel said, “What are you thinking about?”

“Hopper.” And: “We left him with the little people. Should we—”

“They’ll bring him by tomorrow,” Daniel said.

She didn’t like that idea. Hopper belonged here with them, tonight especially. Tonight she wanted to close the shutters and bar the doors to the rest of the world. It was a childish thought, but she could not shake herself free of it.

From the village came the faraway sputtering of the first fireworks.

A thought came to Martha and she spoke it before she could stop herself. “What if it’s all a lie? What if she’s not really sick at all?”

Daniel might have tried to calm her fears by reminding her that Hannah would not be so easily fooled. Instead he said, “What would that gain her?”

Martha lifted a shoulder. “She might want us off guard. She might have come for Nicholas and known we wouldn’t give him up. Maybe it’s got something to do with the Bleeding Heart and the orchard. Maybe she plans on kidnapping Nicholas and holding him until she gets what she wants from Callie.”

Daniel said, “Would you feel better if I went to make sure Nicholas is safe? I’ll take Abel and I can be back in an hour or less. Maybe Callie and Ethan will let me bring him back here, if that will keep him out of harm’s way.”

For a long moment Martha tried to convince herself that to send Daniel back to the village after such an exhausting day would be self-indulgent and selfish, but the truth was, she was uneasy. And something else she hadn’t said, and could not say, was that she would be glad of the hour alone. An hour of quiet to try to make sense of the image he had put in her head, of her mother weeping in the deep of the woods on the day she was conceived.

So many of her memories of Jemima had to do with her mother’s determination to get what she needed and wanted at any cost. Curiosity had asked if maybe that wasn’t the worst thing you could accuse a woman of, fighting to survive. But Curiosity didn’t know about what had happened on the bridge that winter.

“Martha?”

“It would be very good of you, if you aren’t too tired.”

Daniel kissed her on the brow, his hand resting lightly on the nape of her neck. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

She was sitting on the porch when he came around from the stable a few minutes later, leading Abel. Daniel’s smile was like a balm, and for a
moment she thought of changing her mind and telling him that she was being silly; he needn’t go back to the village again. They could sit together and listen to the fireworks, and then later there was their bed and sleep. She would sleep for a day, and when she woke up her head would be clear. Answers would present themselves.