Fire Along the Sky Read online

  “I'll go fetch Da and the others.” Lily turned away, flinging back the words over her shoulder. A challenge, and one Elizabeth must meet.

  She had to run to catch Lily up, and then she walked beside her daughter in silence. Little by little the laughter and voices faded away behind them to be replaced by the sounds of water and wind moving through the corn and all the noise of the woods on a late summer day. Little by little Lily's pace slowed to something close to normal, and Elizabeth was glad of it; she found herself a little short of breath.

  When they had got as far as the strawberry fields without talking Lily stopped suddenly, folded her arms across her waist and looked down the mountain toward Paradise.

  “Da will be glad to have Luke home.”

  “Yes, he will.”

  “They'll go off with the men to talk about war and Hannah will go off with Jennet and I'll be left behind with the old women, as I always am.”

  Elizabeth bit back a smile. “They have a lot to talk about, it's true.”

  “Sister could have talked to me,” Lily said, turning toward Elizabeth. Her face was flushed with color. “Why wouldn't she talk to me? I'm not a little girl anymore. She thinks of me as a child, you and Da think of me as a child. But I'm not. At my age Sally had two children.”

  It was a discussion they had had so many times in so many ways. From long experience Elizabeth knew that there was nothing she could say at this moment that would soothe this unhappy daughter, who had longed for one thing alone and now could not have it.

  Elizabeth understood too well; she had lived all her own girlhood with a family whose loving concern had tied her down as surely as ropes. She had been the bookish cousin with too many opinions and too little income of her own, sometimes amusing in her own way but more often irritatingly informed and vocal. She had left that world behind and come to this one, as Lily wanted to leave here and find a place of her own and the life she wanted.

  It is only a delay, Elizabeth promised her daughter silently. Just until it is safe to let you go. It was a sentence she repeated to herself whenever she looked at Lily, but one she tried not to say out loud, because an argument would follow as surely as thunder followed lightning. So she told herself what she could not say to her daughter: Better unhappy than dead.

  After a moment they started walking again.

  Lily said, “Did you know about Jennet and Luke?”

  “Of course not,” Elizabeth answered shortly. “I would not have kept it to myself if I had known they were coming.”

  “No,” Lily said impatiently. “Did you know about them?”

  Elizabeth pulled up in surprise. Her first inclination was to ask Lily to explain herself and then she saw the two of them again in her mind's eye: Jennet's eyes flashing down at Luke as he stood next to her horse. Something there beyond friendship, a tension as fine and strong as wire drawn out and out over the hottest of fires.

  “I know of no connection between them,” Elizabeth said, more slowly. “Jennet is recently widowed, and she hasn't seen Luke in such a long time. I don't think it's likely . . .”

  She let her voice trail away because Lily was looking at her with one eyebrow raised, as she herself looked at children when they worked too hard to make reason out of fancy.

  “Neither of them has ever written or said a word to me about a connection,” Elizabeth said finally. “Nor has anyone else.”

  “Well, there's one there now,” Lily said.

  Elizabeth could not correct her but neither could she ask all the questions that came to mind, and so she was silent.

  She found Nathaniel by himself rumbling through the baskets in the workroom. “Am I glad to see you, Boots.” He thrust a bloody hand toward her. “I'm no good at bandages. Can you tie this up for me?”

  “You're no good at stitches either,” she said, catching his hand to look more closely at the gash that ran just below his knuckles from thumb to little finger. Blood trailed down and over the Kahnyen'kehàka tattoos that circled his wrist.

  He put his head down next to hers to look at the wound more closely. “It's just a scratch. I already cleaned it out, so bind it up for me now and let me get back to work. We were in the middle of bringing down that dead oak on the other side of Squirrel Slough.”

  Elizabeth touched her forehead to his and looked him in the eye. “Nathaniel Bonner,” she said. “I want you to listen to me very closely. You need stitches or this wound will not close properly, and you know it very well yourself. You must go to Hannah or Curiosity—that much you may choose.” Then she pressed a piece of linen to the wound and began to wind it firmly.

  He pushed out a frustrated sigh that rippled through the muscles in his shoulders and down his arms, giving in without more argument.

  “And there's company coming,” she added, tying off the linen and avoiding his gaze. “You'll want to be here.”

  A little spark of interest replaced the resignation in his expression. “Good company, I hope.”

  “The very best,” Elizabeth promised, and kissed him on the forehead. He pulled her closer with his free arm around her waist and kissed her properly before he let her go. He smelled of honest sweat and pennyroyal ointment and pine tar and blood, and his mouth tasted of mint. Then he swung her around to pin her where she stood, his arms stemmed to either side of her head. It was one of Elizabeth's greatest pleasures in life, to have her husband catch her up against a wall to kiss her. He knew this very well, and he used it now to his advantage.

  “Are you going to tell me or will I have to tease it out of you?”

  “Promise me first that you'll let Hannah see to your hand straightaway.”

  He grinned at her, a flash of teeth that made him look half his age and up to no good, her wild backwoodsman of a husband, too clever by half.

  “I promise you nothing but a good tickling, Boots, unless you speak up right this minute.”

  She put her hands against his chest, but she did not bother pushing; he would let her go when he had enough of this, and not before. “All right, a hint then. Who would you like to have here with us more than anyone else in the world?”

  “Strikes-the-Sky,” he said without hesitation, and the words jolted Elizabeth as surely as a slap.

  “Oh,” she said. “Of course. I wish it were Strikes-the-Sky, but I think you will be pleased nonetheless. Luke is come.”

  Nathaniel looked just as surprised as she was herself. “Luke? But he always sends word first.”

  She shrugged. “And he brought Jennet with him.”

  It was hard to shock Nathaniel, but she had managed it. He pushed her a little away from him to study her face, as if she would make up so outlandish a tale.

  “Jennet Scott? Of Carryck?”

  “Do you know another?”

  “You're saying Luke brought that girl over the border in the middle of a war?”

  “Yes, he did,” Elizabeth said. “I expect they'll be here shortly, and I have to find places for them all to sleep. So if you'll promise me—”

  He kissed her hard, the kind of kiss that meant he had more on his mind and meant her to know it too, though they both had work to do.

  “I'll get Hannah to sew up my hand,” he said. His disquiet and concern were giving way, slowly, to pleasure at the idea of seeing his son. “As soon as I've laid eyes on Luke and had an explanation.”

  There was a celebration to get ready on short notice, food for fifty people, wood to be gathered for the cook fires, and a hundred other tasks from the setting up of trestle tables to the tuning of Levi's fiddle. It seemed that Cookie's sons were known as far away as Albany for their musical talent.

  The villagers came to the Todd place in a dribble and then in a steady stream, carrying kegs of ale and cider and squealing piglets that would find their way onto spits before the afternoon was much older. There were chickens to be plucked, a brace of trout and another of bass, baskets of plums and apples just off the trees, casks of bacon fat and butter, jars of honey and
pickles, and loaves of bread. Curiosity directed the cooking, marching back and forth so that her skirts snapped smartly around her legs.

  Jennet drew people to her without trying, and she met all of them with such openness and simple delight that Hannah found herself laughing at nothing. Then Curiosity put an end to it all.

  “Get yourselves up to Lake in the Clouds,” she said, putting one hand on Jennet's shoulder and one on Hannah's. “Get settled in, have a look around and meet the rest of the folks. Then chase everybody on down here. I expect it'll be two hours at least afore we're ready to start dishing up any food.” She cast a glance across the field. “I'd tell you to take Luke and that Simon fellow with you but it look to me like Gabriel already got just about everybody who can hold a stick in the bagattaway game.”

  A group of men and boys had stripped to the waist and divided themselves into teams. Daniel and Gabriel and Luke stood together, the two older brothers with their heads bent down toward Gabriel in a protective posture that made Hannah's breath catch on memories too sweet and tender to deny, for once. She could feel Strikes-the-Sky and the boy both at her back, the solid warmth of them and their absence both.

  “Ooh,” said Jennet, craning her neck. “I've been wanting to watch—”

  Curiosity gave her another gentle push. “No fear, Miss Jennet, that game won't be over soon. You can come back in plenty of time to watch them stomping on each other. Get on with you now.”

  They went on horseback, Hannah taking Luke's big gelding and leading the way. Now and then Jennet would ask a question, but for the most part she seemed so intent on taking in the details of the village and then the mountain trail that she fell silent. Hannah was glad of the time to think, though the thoughts that raced through her head were so many and quick that she could fix on none of them for very long, except this: her brother had come home and brought Jennet with him, and for no reason she could understand, Hannah felt as if she had just woken from a long and unnatural sleep.

  Chapter 2

  As soon as Luke's letter arrived with the news that Hannah was on her way home, Elizabeth had set about making one of the four chambers over for her; it was that, she told Nathaniel, or lose her mind with the wait and worry.

  In a matter of days every fine thing in the house had found its way to the chamber: the best blankets, an embroidered pillow slip normally folded away in tissue, a heavy china washbasin and matching water jug sent all the way from England. A new standing desk had been placed between the windows and a worktable in the center of the room. A bright rag rug covered the plank floor and on a long shelf above the bed a dozen books stood between blocks of cherry wood sanded and polished to gleaming.

  Everyone had come to leave some gift, large or small, for Hannah; clothing and soap and candles, a beaver pelt for the foot of the bed, a pretty rock. A panther skull, scrubbed clean, held down a pile of newspapers from Albany and Manhattan.

  Daniel and Lily had argued for days about the right gift and finally decided on a bottle of ink, a dozen finely sharpened quills, and a new journal sewn from the best paper they could afford. Because, they reminded each other, Hannah always kept careful records of the patients she saw. In the old days her fingers had always been stained with ink.

  In the week between the news of Hannah's coming and her arrival, Lily had imagined the hours she would spend in this room with her sister, but she had found instead that the door was always closed. Now she stood in the middle of Hannah's chamber, and Lily saw what she had only suspected: since she had come home Hannah had not written a word; the quills and ink and paper were untouched. Nor was there any sign of her old journals, the ones she had taken west with her or the ones she must have written over the years. Whether they had been lost or stolen or destroyed only Hannah knew.

  This was another kind of loss, one that Lily had not imagined, and it made her catch her breath and understand finally and clearly what she had been afraid to admit, even to herself: the sister she had missed so fiercely was not home and would never come home, because she did not exist anymore.

  “Space will be very dear,” Lily's mother said behind her. “I cannot put Luke and Simon Ballentyne in the same room with Daniel and Gabriel, and so I must make room for all the young women here. I trust you will not mind sharing with your sister and cousin. No doubt they will keep you awake all night with their talk.”

  Even an hour ago Lily would have been thrilled at this turn of events, but she was suddenly overcome with shame for her own selfishness. Her mother, occupied with the linen in her arms, seemed not to take any note at all.

  Hannah's chamber had windows hung with white muslin curtains on two walls: one provided a view of the orchard and beyond that the cliffs; the other looked out over the whole glen and the mountains. Jennet Scott Huntar thought she had never seen a view so beautiful. Mountain upon mountain, fading away into a blue haze on the horizon where the sun made its way toward the other side of the world. The endless forests. Jennet had never been able to grasp the idea until she saw it for herself: a world overwhelmed with trees, and every one of them glowing in the sun and casting shadows like reaching hands.

  “Hannah Bonner,” she said finally. “I waited far too long to come. This is Paradise indeed.”

  “Yes, well,” Hannah said, “it is not without its faults, this Paradise. But I'm glad you're here.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap, her expression calm and almost happy in the late afternoon light. They had been girls the last time they saw each other and they were women now. Both with tragedies behind them, or losses that were meant to be tragedies. Sometimes Jennet said it out loud: I am a widow. But it sounded strange and even silly to her own ears. Her widowhood seemed a plaything, of no real substance, while Hannah's losses had dug themselves deep into the bone.

  Her cousin's face had set in its planes and curves, with faint creases on the brow and at the corners of her eyes. A line of blackfly bites arched across the high crest of her cheekbone like a new tattoo, and below that other scars shimmered faintly where furrows had been dug into the soft flesh and healed. She wore a small doeskin bag on a string around her neck, one that she fingered when she was lost in her thoughts as she was now.

  She has lost more than I ever imagined having, Jennet reminded herself, and came to sit across from Hannah on the single chair at the table.

  “Look,” she said, drawing a chain out of her bodice. “I've worn it since the day you left Carryck. My mother thought it was unladylike to wear a bear's tooth next to my heart, but Ewan did not seem to mind.”

  Hannah said, “I'm glad you still have it.” She looked away briefly. “I lost mine, some time ago.”

  Jennet hesitated. “Will you tell me about it?”

  Hannah blinked at her. “I think I will,” she said finally, and she managed a small smile. “Sometime I think I will. If you will talk to me about Luke.”

  “That's a promise then,” said Jennet. “But let me ask you this: will you listen to what I have to say with an open mind, Hannah Bonner?”

  Hannah had believed herself incapable of being surprised, but then she had not reckoned with Jennet, who reached into a pocket tied around her waist and took out a deck of cards wrapped in a rosary.

  “This is called a tarot deck. It was given to me by a friend; I think someday you may well meet her.” She unwrapped the rosary and laid it on the table very gently. “The beads are for my mother, to quiet her scolding.” From the top of the deck she took a single card and turned it face up.

  “This is the card I want to tell you about. It's called Fuerza in the Spanish tongue, that means ‘strength' in English. You see that Fuerza is a woman in her full power. She holds a lion's mouth open with her bare hands.” She looked Hannah directly in the eye. “This is what you may find hard to believe. The first time I saw this card I felt the bear's tooth growing warm against my skin.” She paused and looked at Hannah very closely. “Shall I go on?”

  Hannah was o
vercome by a rush of feelings she could not immediately sort out: unease and curiosity were foremost among them, but just beneath the surface there was a flickering of anger she could not explain.

  “I'm listening.”

  “Very well. As soon as I arrived in Canada—as soon as Luke stopped his ranting long enough to answer a question—I asked for news of you, as I'd had no word or letter for more than a year. Luke told me what he knew, and that you were on the road home, and why.

  “Well, of course I wanted to leave Montreal and come here straightaway but your brother would not hear of it. Every day there was news of another skirmish on the border, and he would not risk my neck, nor his own. But I could not stop thinking about you walking so far to get home to Paradise, and so every morning I laid out three cards thinking of you.”

  She paused. “Twice in a row Fuerza showed herself to me, but always in reverse, you see, like this. Now the lion has gained the advantage over the woman. On the third morning when I sat down I was almost afraid to turn the cards.”

  “If you are going to tell me that the woman was there again, I will have to ask you if you bothered to shuffle the cards.” Hannah said this with a gentle smile, but Jennet was not to be distracted. She shook her head very firmly.

  “I shuffled the cards,” she said. “And I wish I could say Fuerza had shown herself again, but it was something very different. It's called the tower. Hannah, you may believe what you like, but when I saw the tower my heart leapt in my breast and I could draw no breath. It's a fearsome card, and it had never before showed itself to me since I began with this deck of my own. So I went straight to your brother and said that I must come here to see you, should I have to walk the whole way alone, and barefoot.”

  “I take it he gave in?”

  “Not at first,” Jennet said. “We argued for a long while. Then Granny Iona spoke up for me.” Jennet's smile was so quick and overwhelming that Hannah found herself smiling in response.