The Endless Forest (9 page)

She knew it was wrong to be so cheerful when so many people had lost so much, but it was hard. For days she had been so worried, but they were all home now—including Gabriel, who was married. That idea made her stop just where she was.

She hung back a little to take stock. Ma and Da were at the front of the line, then Jennet and Luke with their children, Hannah and Ben with theirs, Gabriel and Annie, who stopped more than once to whisper to each other, Daniel, Ethan, and best of all, Lily and Simon. It was a wonderful sight, but something was missing.

Martha.

“Ma!” she called. “We forgot Martha!”

“Go fetch her, then,” her mother called. “And don’t take no for an answer.”

That was easier said than done. Martha didn’t want to interrupt or interfere, and said she would sleep on the settle in Curiosity’s kitchen rather than get in the way.

“Ma said I was to fetch you,” Birdie told her again. “Do you want me to get in trouble? And anyway, my da’s your guardian, and how can he guard you if you’re all the way over here?”

She held out Martha’s boots, and after a moment’s hesitation, the older girl took them.

By the time they got to the house the fire in the hearth had been fed and the kettle was boiling, but there were no women in sight.

“Gone to put the little people to bed,” Ethan told them. “They’ll be back soon.”

Birdie tried not to show her disappointment. “Did Lily have to go too? And Annie?”

“Your nieces seemed to think so,” said Birdie’s father. “You could go up and join them, if you wanted. Both of you.”

What Martha thought of that idea they never found out, because the door swung open and everybody came back. Or everybody except Hannah and Jennet, who would still be busy answering questions and tucking in.

Birdie’s ma said, “Daniel, I’ve waited all day to hear your account of the flood. Are you too tired to tell it all again?”

They were all tired, but not one of them was willing to wait and so they talked in turns. Daniel and Ben had been right in the middle of things from the beginning, Daniel on one end of the village and Ben on the other. In the middle of their stories Jennet and Hannah came back to the kitchen and Hannah joined in.

“Birdie was a great help to me,” she said. “She was calm and she did exactly as I asked her. She has the makings of an excellent assistant. It’s true, Birdie. Why are you making such a face?”

It came bursting out of her then. “We can talk about the flood tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll be talking about it all summer. But I want to hear from Lily and Simon. I want to hear about their trip, and what took you so long to get back home, and what they brought in their trunks. Where are the trunks, anyway?”

Lily sat up straighter. “That’s a very good question. The last I saw of them was when we abandoned the wagons to walk up here.” Then she slumped back against the settle. “Not that I’d have the energy to go after them.”

“No need,” Ben told her. “We got them sorted through. They’re sitting in the kitchen in the house Ethan offered you, drying out in front of the hearth.”

And that was the first Birdie heard about Lily and Simon going to live in the house next to Ethan’s, the one folks called Ivy House. It struck her as a very bad idea, and she was about to say so when Lily smiled at her.

“I hope you will come and visit with me every day,” she said.

“After school,” Daniel prompted.

“And chores,” said her da.

“Yes, after school and chores,” Lily agreed. “But then you and I will have a lot to talk about, just the two of us.”

Birdie paused and rethought her arguments. It might not be so very bad to have Lily and Simon in a house of their own. There was a great deal to be said for privacy, and there would be precious little of it here over the next months.

“She likes the idea,” Jennet said. “Clever lass.”

Daniel was sitting beside Lily, leaning into her with the warm familiarity of a twin. He turned to her. “Now you,” he said. “Birdie there is
about ready to bust, wondering what held you up so long. What’s this I hear about a hanging?”

Tea was poured and the biscuit tin appeared on the table, followed by cheese and bread and pickles, and more tea, and more talk. Elizabeth, as tired as she was, found it impossible to stay seated. She roamed back and forth, passing dishes, pausing to touch a shoulder or lay her hand on a head. This was not the way she had imagined Lily’s homecoming, but the most important thing was to have them all here, whole and healthy. This one summer they would have together, all of them. In the fall Luke and Jennet would go back to the city and maybe Lily and Simon would move on too. She must not let herself hope for anything more.

It was silly to borrow trouble; she knew that. She stood to fill the teapot, and Nathaniel caught her by the wrist and made her sit again.

“You’re as nervous as a cat,” Nathaniel said to her. His eyes moved over her face. He understood; he always did, when it came to the children. She wondered if today he had thought of the others, the sons they had lost as infants. Sometimes they talked of those boys, how old they would be now, and who they might favor. It was a comfort, that freedom to talk of children thirty years in their graves. To know that they were not completely forgotten.

“Ethan, you must have some more soup,” she said, starting to rise. “You are too thin.”

“No you don’t,” Nathaniel said, pulling her back down again.

“Ma,” Birdie said in mock irritation. “You’d scold me if I kept jumping up from the table.”

“Leave her be.” Luke winked at his stepmother. “It’s her best broody hen imitation.”

Ethan said, “I couldn’t eat any more, Aunt Elizabeth. But maybe there is something I can do for you? Shall I trounce these louts for their impertinence?”

“They may tease me all they like,” Elizabeth said over the laughter. “Today I can’t be ruffled.”

That silenced them for a moment, thinking of the village and the families who had lost so much.

“How bad is it?” Hannah asked.

“Not good,” Gabriel said into his bowl.

“Six missing,” Daniel said. “All three of the Sampsons, Noah True-blood, Grandma May, and the Crispins’ youngest, Alexander.”

“One of your students?” Lily asked her brother, and he nodded.

“Ten years old, good with numbers. Quiet boy, polite.”

“He’s got family on the other side of the river,” Ben said. “He might be there. Could be that the Sampson brothers and all the rest of them are sitting in the kitchen at the mill house drinking cider.”

Nathaniel said, “Let’s hope so. What we do know for sure is, a lot of stock went down the river. Oxley’s sheep and some goats too. A dozen or more milch cows.”

“And a good lot of Callie’s trees are gone,” Daniel added. “Maybe three quarters.”

When Daniel spoke of Callie Wilde it was always with a certain amount of warmth. Elizabeth had once had the idea that something more might grow out of their friendship, but that had never come to pass.

For the first time Martha Kirby spoke up to ask a question. She said, “And Callie herself? Is she safe?”

“She’s a little banged up,” Nathaniel said. “But last I saw her she was walking and talking. Becca gave her a bed at the Red Dog.”

Daniel’s eyes had settled on Martha and stayed right there while the conversation moved off in a new direction. It struck Elizabeth then that he didn’t recognize her, or maybe he was in too much pain to take note. The lines that bracketed his mouth said very clearly that he had strained his shoulder today and must now pay the price. Anything that might distract him would be welcome.

Elizabeth said, “Daniel, you must remember Martha Kirby.”

He started at the name and came up as if out of a dream, already rising from his seat. He leaned over the table and extended his good right hand to Martha.

“I haven’t seen you in five years at least. I guess I was away when you visited the last few times.”

Martha shook the offered hand and agreed that it was a very long time since they had seen each other. She looked as tired as any of them, but she bore it well: a dignified, friendly young woman, sure of herself without any hint of arrogance, though she was rich by most men’s standards
and had spent half her life in the city. To look at her you wouldn’t know that just a week ago the life she had built for herself had fallen to pieces.

Elizabeth had taught Martha as a child, and looking at her now she saw that she had not changed very much after all. There was a quiet strength about her, a dignity that was easily read from the way she held herself. And sometime since they had arrived back in Paradise she had lost the stiff posture of the last weeks. As if she recognized that this place was truly safe, and she belonged here.

She wasn’t the only one to take note. All the men watched Martha when she crossed the kitchen. There was nothing untoward in it; they watched her as they would watch any well-favored young woman, with appreciation. The simple pleasure of looking at a girl in her first full blush. Martha had her father’s heavy, thick hair, though hers was many shades darker. Her complexion was clear and high in color, and her features strong. She might be shy of men for some months or even years, but if she showed any interest at all she would have proposals enough to choose from, before the summer came to an end.

“She’ll have to rebuild,” Martha was saying about Callie.

“I’d have her up here,” Elizabeth said. “But every bed is occupied, some more than once.”

When the laughing stopped, Elizabeth was content to sit quietly at the table and listen as the men talked about the work that would have to start the next day. How many houses would have to be torn down, how many might be repaired, if it might be possible to salvage materials from the great piles of rubble that marked the passing of the water.

Then the apple grunt went around and Elizabeth felt Nathaniel looking at her.

“You and your apple grunt,” she said, but she smiled.

“I’m fond of apples,” he said, winking at her. “Always have been.”

Martha got up to gather plates and take them away, and Daniel watched her go.

He said, “No apple grunt for you, Martha?”

Under the table Nathaniel bumped Elizabeth’s knee with his own and then he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, his warm breath stirring a few wayward curls.

“Stop it.”

She began to protest and his hand pressed into her leg, fingers sliding provocatively.

“If he gets a whiff of what you’re thinking you know he’ll run in the other direction. That ain’t what you want, is it?”

Elizabeth leaned into him. Nathaniel smelled of river water and mud and sweat, but he was healthy and whole. She said, “It is very shallow and selfish of me, but I do resent the fact that Lily’s homecoming has been ruined.”

He narrowed one eye at her, suspicious of this change in the subject.

“I wanted it to be—”

Nathaniel looked around the table, and then looked at her again, pointedly. “What could you want more than this?”

She could not challenge him on that point. He was perfectly right.

“A search party will be going out at first light,” Simon was saying. He didn’t add what they all knew, that the searchers were unlikely to find much to rescue.

“Aye then,” Nathaniel said. “Time we got to bed. Daniel, you planning to walk up the mountain after the long day you’ve had?”

Daniel barely looked up from his cup. He didn’t seem to notice that the table had gone quiet in anticipation. Elizabeth couldn’t remember the last time he had agreed to stay in the village, or when she had dared ask him to stay.

“I want to walk down to the village with Simon and Lily,” he said finally. “And then I’ll see.”

Gabriel and Annie declared it time to set out for Hidden Wolf, and would not hear of bedding down in the parlor or anywhere but their own cabin beside the waterfalls. At the door Elizabeth took Annie’s face between her hands and kissed her soundly on the forehead. She was so much like her mother, and her mother was so missed. How young they were. Children, setting off on their own. Tomorrow, when she had slept, Elizabeth would sit down and think it all through.

By ones and twos they began to drift away to their beds, until she and Nathaniel were alone in the kitchen with the only light coming from the banked hearth where coals pulsed hot beneath the cinders.

“We’ve got the whole summer and into the fall,” Nathaniel said. “Right now it’s time we slept.”

Up the stairs, stepping quietly with Nathaniel behind her, Elizabeth stopped at the top and stood to listen. From behind Luke’s door they
could hear the soft rise and fall of voices. The small chamber Martha had for her own was quiet, and the children’s rooms were just as silent.

“You’ll wake them,” Nathaniel said. He was right, of course. But still she hesitated at the door, listening for some sign. She imagined the girls asleep, all four of them wound together in a bed meant for two adults. The twins on their backs with chins pointed to the rafters, and Hannah’s two girls back-to-back. The boys would be on the floor in the next chamber, all of them claiming to be more comfortable on hard board than soft mattress. Sometime in the night one or all of them would climb into the bed, half asleep, and have no memory of doing so the next morning. Or none that they would admit to. They were good boys, but in such a hurry to grow up and prove themselves. As her own boys had been, to her constant worry. When the next war came—and it would, she could not deny the inevitability of it—she hoped these children would be wise enough to know better.

And if they did not, she would remind them. Wherever they were, she would remind them. It was increasingly clear to her that Paradise would one day be too small for Hannah’s children. Their alternatives would be few and limited. She had become fully aware of this when she took Henry with her to Johnstown when he was just three. People stopped to stare at him without hesitation or apology, because he was beautiful. Because he was long-limbed and graceful. And because his eyes were turquoise and his features symmetrical and his complexion the color of copper seen through old honey.

Like a painting, strangers stop to say. Like an angel. And: Such a shame.