Lake in the Clouds (31 page)

“How is Stephan?” Elizabeth interrupted softly, and Mrs. Emory was content to be led off in a different direction. She nodded her head vigorously so that her jowls wobbled.

“Oh, he’s doing ever so well, ate two bowls of our Katie’s good broth and did he enjoy it? The others too, all of them fed until they could take no more and resting as well they should, poor lambs. Oh, and Mr. Bonner has been asking for you, Mrs. Bonner, and doesn’t he seem distracted? With good reason, of course, so much to take on, the best of shepherds but too many sheep, is that not the case? But we must remember, the Lord our God is a merciful God. Mr. Bonner’s in the parlor with the captain and the others, will you go through and I’ll send in Katie with your tea. Oh, but look, look at your shoes—”

“I’ll dry them in front of the hearth,” Elizabeth said over her shoulder, and then stopped at the sight of Katie in the hall with a tray in her hands. An African woman as tall as Nathaniel, she was hard to overlook. She had come from Africa because she wouldn’t be separated from Mrs. Emory and brought her three boys with her. Elizabeth had rarely heard her speak, but she liked the woman for her calm and quiet competence.

“Go on through then, Mrs. Bonner, Katie will set your place while your shoes dry out.”

Selah was sitting in the corner with her son at the breast, half-asleep herself. Elizabeth took the baby from her so that she could rest more easily. Katie went about her work, unaware or unmoved by the fact that the escaped slaves could not
take their eyes off her, a woman who had left Africa to come here of her own free will.

Nathaniel put a hand on Elizabeth’s knee under the table.

“Tomorrow, Boots,” he said. “We’ll go down to the ship just before first light.”

Elijah turned his attention back to the table. “If the storm passes.”

“It will pass,” said Splitting-Moon, her face turned toward Elizabeth. “It is already passing.” Her cheeks were deeply marked by barely healed grooves she had torn in her skin on the day her son had died, but her voice was as strong and steady, with a hard edge like the bloody crust of a wound that would never heal.

“And Quincy, will he be ready to travel?”

There was a short silence around the table. Captain Mudge leaned forward, pulling on the great bundle of tobacco-stained bristle that served as a mustache. “Quincy will stay here with us,” he said. “My sister will nurse him until he is well enough to follow.”

“He is dying,” said Splitting-Moon calmly, as if the captain hadn’t spoken at all, and there was nothing to contradict. “We will say goodbye to him before we go. Bone-in-Her-Back?”

Elizabeth sat up abruptly and the baby made a dissatisfied sound against her shoulder, the small mouth with its suck-blister making a perfect O. “Yes?”

“There was someone at the window behind you just now, I heard steps.”

The captain grunted. “That’ll be the milch cow wanting to get into the barn—”

“No cow,” interrupted Splitting-Moon. “A man.”

All three men stood quietly and reached for their weapons.

“Move away,” Nathaniel said softly. “Into the corner with Selah—” And he stopped at the sound of a crow’s caw. One corner of his mouth turned down in surprise and then up again, in relief.

“Three-Crows,” said Captain Mudge, sitting back down again.

“Three-Crows?” Elizabeth echoed, as Nathaniel left the room. “The Mahican?”

Three-Crows was an old friend of Hawkeye’s, someone they saw at Lake in the Clouds now and then. “Captain Mudge, how do you know him?”

“Everyone on the Great Lake knows that old rogue,” said Captain Mudge. “There never was such a man for talk. Sary thinks she’s going to convert him with venison stew and small beer, so he stops by here whenever he’s in the area. Happy enough to listen to her preaching while he looks for the bottom of my tankard, is Three-Crows. No doubt he’ll be off south tomorrow.” He sounded quite pleased with the arrangement, most probably because it gave his sister another focus for her ministry besides himself.

“Maybe he would be willing to take a message to Lake in the Clouds,” Elizabeth said. “To reassure the children.”

Splitting-Moon’s face turned into the candlelight with a stricken expression.

“Your good fortune is still with you, Bone-in-Her-Back,” she said, in French this time, the language they had used together before Elizabeth had known much Kahnyen’kehàka. A language that drew them together and separated them from the others. “You have been given a way to comfort your children.”

Bonne chance.

Three-Crows was a tough old Mahican of an age with Elizabeth’s father-in-law, a small man with straggling gray plaits, his neck and arms like so many lengths of woven leather. He was dressed in a combination of clothes, some of which Elizabeth recognized as Mrs. Emory’s handiwork, and some he had been wearing for years, including a pair of buckskin leggings so old and thinned with age that they hung like flaps of his own skin from his hips. On his chest was a tangle of wampum beads and medicine bags and teeth strung on rawhide; for weapons he carried nothing more than a knife and a war club with a head carved to the likeness of a snarling bear. His hands shook a little, most probably with old age and drink both. A slave to the bottle, Mrs. Emory had whispered to Elizabeth when she came in to greet the newest visitor, her mouth set in a purposeful line.

Mrs. Emory stood off to one side with her hands crossed over her bible while Three-Crows worked his way through her stew, willing to let the men have him for a time to discuss their business. Elizabeth was content to listen, too, while Nathaniel laid out their plans. He trusted Three-Crow’s judgment
—when he was sober—and valued his knowledge of the great lake.

Three-Crows used a crust of bread to wipe the last of the stew from the plate.

“Blackbirders about,” he said. “More than usual. You sure they ain’t on to your scent?” He spoke English with an accent like Hawkeye’s, all softened consonants and oddly off beat, and his voice had a deep rasp to it, as if it were about to fail him.

“Could be,” Nathaniel said. “Where’d you see them?”

“All over. The last one on the tail of the lake, two days ago.”

Selah cleared her throat. “You know any of them by name, sir?”

Three-Crows reached for his tankard. “I know them all. The one on Lake George, he used to be up north a lot, the Kahnyen’kehàka called him Knife-in-His-Fist. You must know of him.” He directed this last to Splitting-Moon in her language. His gaze lingered on her face, studying the blank and sightless eyes without embarrassment or apology.

“Knife-in-His-Fist had an Abenaki grandmother,” said Splitting-Moon. “He turned his face away from her people.”

Elizabeth said, “He is a man about my height, with a deep scar here”—she drew a line that extended from the corner of her mouth almost to her right ear—“and missing an eye-tooth?” Three-Crows nodded.

“Dye,” said Nathaniel. “We’ve been expecting him to show up, sooner or later.”

“Perhaps you have, but I had hoped we might avoid this complication,” said Elizabeth, and started when Mudge thumped the table with his fist.

“This man Dye, he got a ship?”

Three-Crows shook his head. “A couple dogs, is all. And a temper.”

Mudge thumped the table again so that the pewter plate jumped. “Dam—Close up your ears now, Sary, because I’m going to use them words that get you so wound up.” He cleared his throat, his jaw sawing hard. “Then the hell with Dye, say I. Damnation, say I. Unless the man can fly he’s no threat to us. I carried Mrs. Bonner all the way to Sorel in the spring mud, ain’t that so? Mrs. Bonner and them babies, with the redcoats on our tails. The
Washington
will get you and
yours to Lacolle safe and sound, be there a hundred damned blackbirders on the lake.”

Elizabeth smiled at him, that smile that she used when somebody needed calming; Nathaniel had seen it work on harder cases than Grievous Mudge, and it worked now.

She said, “Of course you will, Captain. That is why we came to you.”

Late in the night Nathaniel found Elizabeth back in the parlor, sitting at the table with its clutter of maps and papers. By the light of a single candle she was cutting a new quill from a turkey feather, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration. She was very pale, from sleeplessness and worry, and it hurt him to see it.

“Come in, Nathaniel,” she said without looking up. The penknife whispered as she scraped to sharpen the point. “You make me nervous watching there in the dark.”

He came to stand beside her, reaching out a hand to grasp her shoulder and feeling the tightness there. “You’ve got a cramp in your neck.”

“Hmmm. I was about to come to bed but I needed—”

“To go over those papers again.”

The manumission and traveling papers were neatly laid out on the table, each written out on a different kind of paper, each with a different ink. She had labored over them every night for hours, but the truth was she would never be satisfied. If he asked her she would point out all the imperfections: a poorly chosen word, or an inconsistency in the handwriting she had tried to effect. Elizabeth would never be satisfied with these documents she had fabricated; once she had made up her mind to break the law she would not rest until she had met the challenge.

“I had to rewrite the ones that mention Quincy. And of course that means that I had to sign my father’s signature again. I think this time it is more true. Can you imagine how angry he would be to know the part he’s playing in this? The dead have no idea how useful they can be on occasion.” She looked down at her handiwork and one corner of her mouth went up, in reluctant amusement. “You’ll have to sign it again too, Nathaniel.” She pointed to the bottom of the sheet.

Nathaniel picked it up and read to himself.

“Boots, if you had a year you couldn’t do a better job.” When he had signed the spot she indicated, he put the quill down and set his hands on her shoulders to work the tight muscles. Elizabeth let out a little whimper and arched up to meet him. After a long minute she said, “I wrote a letter to the children as well.” Her voice had gone suddenly soft and he didn’t need to look at her face to know that she was near losing control over the tears she had been holding back for days.

Nathaniel leaned down to fold his arms around her. In her ear he said, “They’ll like that, having a letter. I expect they’ll argue over who gets to sleep with it under the bed tick.”

“Of course,” said Elizabeth, smiling a little and rubbing her cheek against his arm. “I am counting on it. A good argument will keep them from worrying too much about us.”

The clock on the mantel struck two, and Elizabeth looked up in real surprise. “So late. Did Jode come?”

“He was here for a good hour.”

“Ah.” Elizabeth let out a great sigh. “And is he coming with us to Canada?”

“Splitting-Moon thinks he will,” Nathaniel said. “But we won’t know for sure until we board the
Washington
—and that in about three hours, let me remind you.”

“You’re worried about him.”

“Oh aye,” Nathaniel said easily. “About him losing his temper
at the wrong time, about Dye, about the garrison at Lacolle. There’s plenty to worry about, Boots. We don’t need to go looking for anything new.”

She reached out to take his hand, pressing hard. “We’ll manage it together, you and I. We’ve managed worse.”

“Aye, so we have.” He ducked his head and blew out the candle, leaving the clutter of maps and plans and papers behind in the dark. They were left with the sounds of the sleeping house and the wind in the trees, the sharp smells of tallow candle, wood smoke, mutton stew. Fear.

Elizabeth let herself be pulled out of the chair and into her husband’s arms. It was good to stand with him like this, ready to be led off like a child to her bed, wanting nothing but sleep and forgetfulness for the few hours that were left before they must leave this place and head north. She was far more frightened than she cared to admit, for herself, for him, for the people who slept in the rooms above them, for their children. She let herself relax against Nathaniel to feel the simple fact of him, his calm determination, more comforting than words would ever be.

“I could carry you,” he said, his mouth pressed against her hair.

Elizabeth smiled in the dark, because it was true; because he would carry her and did carry her, even when she walked beside him.

They went down to the ship without lantern or torch to show the way, strung together along the footpath like buttons on a string. Captain Mudge led with Elijah close behind. Splitting-Moon followed her husband by means of a rawhide thong looped around his waist on one end and her wrist on the other, just as Kahnyen’kehàka warriors had once led kidnapped women and children away from their homes.

Why this image came to Elizabeth she did not know, but it made her shudder. She was second to the last in the line, with Nathaniel bringing up the rear. Her husband at her back had always been enough to steady her resolve, but now she saw before her a dozen people, every one of them here only because she had thought to suggest it. They might have made their way north through the endless forests with Nathaniel to lead them, but she would not have him gone so long: it was her impatience that had brought them here. Elizabeth shivered in spite of the broadcloth cloak and heavy skirts, her pulse drumming wildly in her throat.