Fire Along the Sky (9 page)

“Not an Englishman either,” Nathaniel said. “Not if I know Wee Iona.”

“Not an Englishman,” Luke agreed. “Never that.”

He did in fact have an English grandfather, but Wee Iona would not speak his name, had not spoken it even on the day she learned of his death.

“I never did hear the story how it was that Iona Fraser ever let Pink George get a child on her without slitting his throat,” Nathaniel said. “I always thought Robbie MacLachlan would tell me before he died, but I missed that chance.”

“I'm guessing that's a story she'll take to her grave,” said Luke.

“You don't think your mother knows?”

Luke's mouth jerked at the corner. “I'll ask her, the next time I see her.”

Giselle was a topic they rarely discussed; Luke, out of loyalty, and Nathaniel because he knew her so little.

“So what do you call yourself?” Nathaniel asked. “If not Canadian?”

“Iona always said I could choose my own place and name when I was old enough. She thought it was a gift she was giving me, and I thought so too, at first.”

He looked at Nathaniel straight on, something he rarely did. “You don't call yourself American.”

“No,” Nathaniel said. “I don't think of myself as an American.”

“But you pay taxes to the American government.”

“I pick my battles,” Nathaniel said. “And my wars too. Is that what this is about, the new war?”

Luke nodded. “I put the question out of my mind for a long time, but a war makes a man take sides. The only conclusion I can come to is that I won't do anything to help the British.”

“Will you do anything to hurt them?”

He got a shrug for his answer. “Haven't got that far yet in my thinking. What I do know is, I'm a fortunate man but it'll take a lot more than good luck if I want to hold on to what I've got.”

“And Jennet is one of those things.”

Luke took a deep breath. “She's the most important of them.”

Chapter 5

When they were younger, the boys had built a fort in the woods, an elaborate construction of rocks and cast-off boards and interwoven branches that they were always improving. In the winter it fell prey to the snows, to bears and foxes and wolves. Every spring they repaired it.

In their day Daniel and Blue-Jay and Ethan never allowed Lily or any of the girl cousins into the fort. But now Gabriel and Annie had claimed it for their own and made up new rules. They liked Lily, who drew them funny pictures and sometimes brought them apples or maple sugar, and so she could come and sit with them in the fort and listen to their stories.

She walked the mountain for most of the afternoon before she went to the fort where the children were waiting for her. It was where Daniel would come looking, and because she could not avoid him forever she sat down to wait for him. Lily felt the chill of the approaching storm on the nape of her neck, and in the lengthening shadows she saw the coming of an early dusk.

Annie caught sight of Daniel first. She flung herself out of the fort and ran at him, climbed him like a tree to take a seat on his shoulder where she held on to his head and balanced precariously. As Lily had once done with Runs-from-Bears; that memory came to her now bittersweet.

Gabriel stood too, but kept his distance. “Is it true you're going off to war tomorrow?”

Daniel nodded. “It is.”

“And my brother too,” Annie said, thumping Daniel companionably on the head. “So you can keep each other out of trouble.”

“That's the way of it,” Daniel agreed. His gaze had never left Lily's face. She felt it like a touch.

“Sister's pretty mad,” Gabriel said, as if Lily were not there at all. “I don't know if you can talk her out of it this time, brother.”

“He's got to try,” Annie said. She swung down from Daniel's shoulder and landed with a thump.

She produced a hopeful smile and turned it on Daniel full force. “Can we stay and listen?”

He looked out over the valley and the bowl of the sky brimming with storm clouds. Heat lightning flickered in the distance. “Better get home before the rain comes,” he said.

And when the threat of rain did little to move them Daniel said, “There's a prize for whoever gets back to Lake in the Clouds first.”

They were gone in a flash. Daniel stood right where he was for a full minute and then another.

Finally he said, “I don't know why you have to make this so hard, sister.”

His expression was almost comical: outrage and righteous indignation and confusion. If he were closer she might slap him. Her throat cramped closed.

“I'd like your blessing.”

As if he were hungry and she were refusing to feed him. Lily blinked back tears.

“You can't have it,” she said.

“I'm going anyway,” he said. “I've got to go.”

“No, you don't.” She kept her voice as quiet and calm as she could; it was the only way to make him listen. “You're going because you want to. It makes no sense to put yourself in harm's way like this.”

“Not to you, maybe.” He looked away, the muscles in his throat working. “Just the way you do things that don't make sense to me. But I ain't ever tried to stop you.”

Words like cold water, like diving into the lake under the falls at first light: a revelation. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, and what came out shamed her.

“I don't know what you mean.”

The hardest thing, the one thing she had not counted on: her brother's sympathy and understanding.

“It's only a matter of time before somebody else figures it out, Lily. I think Ma half suspects now.”

“I don't know what you mean.” Her voice creaked like an old lady's.

“You're headed for heartbreak,” he said.

“And you're headed for an early grave.” The words choked her but they did their work: he jerked as if she had reached across the ten feet that separated them and struck him. They looked at each other like that for three heartbeats.

w“I have to go, sister. I wish I could make you understand.”

“So do I,” she said, and turned away.

I may never see you again
. The unspoken words trailed behind her like smoke.

Lily ran, her skirts kilted up through her belt; she ran until her breath came ragged and her lungs were on fire, and then she pushed, dug herself into the pain and ran harder. The rain came first in stuttering waves and then it steadied and in a matter of seconds she was soaked to the skin.

There were two ways into the village without a boat: she could take the long way around the lake through the marsh or she could go over the bridge.

It's just a matter of time before somebody else figures it out.

She hesitated for a moment, her face turned up to the storm.

What did it matter anymore? She went the quicker route, still running until she came to the bridge where she stopped. Beneath her feet the wood thrummed with the running river, a living thing that would take her away from here if she let it.

She stood under the pulsing sky, arms outstretched, and then she began to make her way across the village by the way of back lanes. At the edge of the Wildes' orchards she paused to watch the trees, leaves snapping and fluttering in the wind. Apples thumped to the ground with each gust. The darkening storm had taken all the color out of the world but the lightning brought it back in quick bright pulses.

Then a double fork of lightning lit the sky with a million candles and showed her everything: the neat rows of trees, the cabin at the far end of the orchard, its windows shuttered against the storm. Smoke drifted up from the chimney to be caught by the wind and scattered.

The barn door stood open just wide enough to show her the man standing there, his arms at his sides. When the light was gone Lily closed her eyes and saw him still, burned into her flesh.

She wrapped her arms around herself and walked on, the sweet smells of wet grass and bruised apples rising up like a cloak. At the barn door she stepped into cool darkness, gooseflesh pebbling her wet skin.

Nicholas was waiting for her. The lightning showed him white and blue and white again: more ghost than man, until he came forward and stopped, close enough to touch her if he wanted. If he dared. She imagined she could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady. Such a strange thing, that a heart could keep on without faltering for so many years, undeterred by loss. Lily put her hand on her own chest.

Light flickered on his face: planes and circles and intersecting lines drawn on the fragrant dark. Simple geometry that arranged itself into something extraordinary. When she was still a girl, long before they had stumbled upon each other in the way of man and woman, she had put down his likeness on paper many times.

On the day he married Dolly Smythe she had drawn them together. He had still been in mourning for his sister but his expression had been clear and full of hope. And why not? Dolly was the kindest young woman in all of Paradise, sweet and hardworking both, and she had been in love enough for both of them. And a farmer needed a wife.

Then for a long time Lily had given Nicholas Wilde little thought, until Callie had come into the world and her mother had left it, in her own quiet way.

Dolly lost on the mountain, the second or third or fourth time; they had stopped keeping count. Anyone who could hold a lantern and call her name went looking. The searchers came to Lake in the Clouds for coffee, soup, an hour's sleep, news. Lily was there alone half-asleep in front of the hearth when Nicholas came with Dolly cradled in his arms like a child. He had put her on the cot by the fire so gently, stroked her damp hair from her face, watched while Lily lifted his wife's head and fed her broth. When she was asleep Nicholas went out on the porch and wept.

He had frightened Lily so with the terrible power of his weeping, beyond anything she had ever imagined. She was standing behind him, uncertain and afraid, when he turned and pressed his face into her skirts and wound his arms around her legs.

For an hour or more she had held him while he talked and wept and told her things she had no right to know and did not understand, not really. Then he had raised his head to look at her and all her doubts and worries fled. She had comforted him, somehow, with the simple fact of her presence. They had been friends, at first. Nothing more.

“My brother and Blue-Jay are going to join the fighting,” she told him now. “With Luke.”

His expression softened. “Your parents?”

“They gave their consent.”

“You knew it would happen, sooner or later. He will not be satisfied until he goes.”

“But you won't.” Poking at him with words as sharp as a nail because she did not want to touch him, could not allow herself to touch him. “You won't go.”

“No. You know that I couldn't even if I wanted to.”

The long list of things that could not be done, yes. Lily knew them well. She often went to sleep reciting them to herself: he could not leave his orchards, his wife, his daughter; Dolly could not be cured nor could she die.

Thirteen years and innumerable laws of both God and man separated them. They never pretended otherwise to each other; they made no promises or plans. They had exchanged nothing beyond the occasional awkward and lingering kiss. They could not be together, and so finally Lily had made plans to go to the city, and he had averted his face when he might have asked her to stay.

Such a good man, people said of him. Clever, a hard worker, always ready to help a neighbor, with a calm smile in spite of the burdens he bore.

“Look,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders to turn her.

A rain-soaked orchard alive with the churning wind, shadows that shivered and jumped. She waited for the lightning and then saw what he meant her to see. The bear stood on her hind legs swiping at the ripe apples. Her fur was beaded with light and her eyes shone red in the lightning.

The men in the village shook their heads over Nicholas Wilde, a man who wouldn't shoot the bears who raided his orchard. If they knew, as Lily did, that Nicholas named his bears as a farmer named his cows, they would conclude that he was just as mad as his wife.

“Which one is that?” Lily asked.

“Maria,” he said. “I call her Maria. She likes the Seek-No-Further best of all.”

A terrible sadness came over Lily, a sense of loss so strong that her body could not contain it. It was something she could not hide from him, nor even try.

“Lily,” he said softly. “Tell me the rest of it. What are you planning?”

“I don't know yet. Something. Anything.”

“Montreal?”

In the flashing light she saw his face and wished she had not. How was it he saw the very things she meant most to hide?

“If Luke agrees.”

He grunted softly. “Even if he doesn't.”

She reached out toward him in the dark. “Will you kiss me goodbye?”

“Ah, Christ. Lily.”

She was turning away when he reached out and pulled her into his arms. Where they pressed together from hip to shoulder he was quickly as wet as she; Lily felt him shudder with cold or longing or both. His mouth on the curve of her neck, at her ear, his breath soft and warm.

“You know I would marry you if I could.” It was something he had never said to her before and Lily was surprised to find that those words she had imagined so often could sound so hollow.

He kissed her mouth gently, his fingers on her face. The kiss of a friend. She took his head in her hands and pulled him to her and took the kiss she wanted.

Then she looked at his face as if to memorize it, and she left him for the waning storm.

By the time Lily had got home the sun had come out again to simmer on the edge of a sky washed clean of clouds.

Gabriel came bolting out of the house to tell her the news: Jennet was to stay with them at Lake in the Clouds when Daniel and Blue-Jay went to join the fighting. It was good news, of course. It meant company for Hannah and distraction for Lily's mother. These thoughts she kept to herself, for the time being, while anger had the upper hand.

“You're not surprised,” Gabriel said, deeply affronted that his news should garner so little response.

“There are surprises and surprises,” Lily said. “And more to come.”

She had meant to speak up during the going-away supper, but the conversation at the crowded table was quick and lively and full of laughter and Lily could not find it in herself to put an end to it. Instead she kept busy passing plates and refilling bowls, laughing with the others when laughter was called for.

Finally Many-Doves simply took a bowl out of her hands and pushed her back to her place at the table, where she had no choice but to let herself be studied.

They were all watching her when they thought she would not notice. Her parents, Daniel, Many-Doves, even Gabriel, each of them concerned, not all of them able or willing to hide it. Simon Ballentyne sat across from her and he watched too, silently. His admiration should have pleased her, she knew, but instead Lily felt only irritation: yet another man who was willing to keep his distance.

There was apple grunt for dessert and then Gabriel wanted to hear the old story of the gaol break at the Montreal garrison the winter that the twins were born. Just at that moment Lily realized that if she did not speak up now she must scream. She stood suddenly and the room went silent.

“I have something to say.”

Nathaniel had been waiting for this, but it seemed to take Elizabeth by surprise. Or maybe, he corrected himself in the small silence that followed Lily's announcement, maybe it was not so much surprise as simple fear.

Daniel put down his fork and folded his hands in front of himself. “Go ahead then, sister.”

He was expecting a lecture at best, but there was something else coming. Nathaniel could smell it in the air. He said, “We're listening.”

Lily pulled herself up to her full height, ready to do battle. Sometimes when she held herself like this Nathaniel saw his own mother in the line of her back and the set of her jaw. Which was both a comfort and a curse; he loved his mother and he missed her still every day, but Cora Bonner had been a force to reckon with when she made up her mind.