Lake in the Clouds (33 page)

Selah put the sleeping child there in the cradle Charlie made of his arms. The baby flexed in his sleep, eyes fluttering and his mouth working noisily until he settled again.

“Thank you,” said Selah. She got up gracefully and turned away to Elizabeth and Nathaniel. “Will you come up on deck with me? I’d like to walk a little.”

The day passed slowly, divided between walks on the deck and the cabin, food and sleep and talk, and one short period in which the weapons—brought to the ship in the dead of night and hidden behind a false bulkhead—were taken out to be checked and cleaned. Quakers did not bear arms, and it was as Quakers they would pass safely into Canada; as uneasy as it made them all, the rifles and muskets and hunting knives were put back in their hiding place.

With every ship that passed without note or hail Elizabeth’s smile became a little less forced. Most were just merchant vessels, schooners and bateaux and great clumsy rafts that hugged the shore, but one navy cutter overtook them without a second look. Nathaniel saw how ready Elizabeth was to be cheered, how pleased she was by the good spirits in the crowded cabin, where the voyagers had fallen into the kind of storytelling that makes time pass, each of them trying to best the one that went before with the most outrageous or oddest tale.

They spoke of childhood pranks and tricks played, of spiders outwitted by flies and cats made to look foolish by mice, of people who grew wings and witch women whose love potions found unlikely targets. Pico told the story of a bullfrog in
a pair of breeches that made Elizabeth laugh until she cried. They did not speak of death or the graves so recently dug, of escaping to the north or the lives they had run from; neither did they speak of the future, of the lives they might lead in Canada.

With each story the fear that had given them the energy to come this far was driven back a little. All of the voyagers began to show more interest in the world outside the cabin, even Charlie, who had been roused from his grief by a giant’s tooth. Most of them ventured on deck for a few minutes to see the countryside on either side of the lake, the blue haze of the mountains rolling away to the west, the startling green of forests that crowded down to the lakeshore. Jode went on deck more and more often, drawn by fresh air and sharp wind and the sight of the sailors at work. As the day wore on the other men grew restless and went up in revolving groups of twos and threes. Nathaniel watched them from the window that opened onto the deck and caught pieces of their conversations.

They wondered about everything, the working of the sails and the windlass and the wheel; they asked each other questions that couldn’t be answered about the things they saw on shore: how long a rotting hulk had been settling into a stretch of shoreline and how it had come to ground itself, how many kinds of ducks could be found on this water, if a strong man could swim from one shore to the other, how long it took to build the big rafts that moved timber to the mills. Sometimes Captain Mudge came to give them a few words about their progress, and Tim Card found them a willing audience when he could spare the time from his duties.

The old sailor was never at a loss for a story to tell; simply by scanning the lake something would come to him. As he listened at the cabin window, it seemed to Nathaniel that most of Card’s tales seemed to be woven together, bits of Indian stories, of myth and bible stories and wars. It made a strange picture, little Tim Card with his bristled chin and tufts of white hair sticking out of the holes in his cap, surrounded by black men twice his size who bowed their heads politely, listening with real interest to stories of fur smugglers, Tory duplicity, and fallen angels.

Elizabeth came to stand beside Nathaniel, leaning against
the window casement with her arms crossed low and her chin on her chest. She listened with a half-smile as Tim pointed out landmarks and refought, moment by moment, the Battle of Champlain and the burning of the American fleet. His voice drifted to them in snatches:
General Arnold
and
snuck out from under their noses
and
gave them a run the likes of which.

In her Quaker gray Elizabeth seemed not quite herself, contained somehow and made smaller, but when she turned her head to smile at him the fire and fight of her were still bright on her face. She held out a hand and he took it, to trace the calluses and ink stains and to press her palm against his mouth and touch her skin with his tongue so that she jumped and pulled her hand away, sending him a look that was meant to be a reprimand but didn’t quite manage to hide the spark he had ignited.

She pursed her lips and pointed with her chin to the men who stood with Tim Card at the rail. “With every mile they are more returned to themselves.”

Nathaniel put a hand on her shoulder. “I was just thinking the same thing about you, Boots.”

“Were you?” She lifted her face, heart-shaped and pale and sincere, to him to show him her surprise. The gray of her eyes seemed almost silver in the sunshine, and he noticed for the first time a thread of white in her hair. At that moment he could see the resolute old woman she would become someday, steely in her bones.

He said, “What do you think you would be doing now if you had never left England?”

She inclined her head. “Looking after my cousin’s children, visiting my brother in debtor’s gaol, and writing extracts from library books, no doubt. What do you think?”

“Sometimes I wonder if you might have got it in your head to write books, like your Mrs. Wollstonecraft.”

She put a hand to her mouth and laughed. “This is a new approach, Nathaniel. Most usually when you are taken with a fit of remorse and worry for my well-being you simply tell me I should have been safer had I stayed in England. Now you have me giving up fame and fortune as a lady writer to come to the wilderness. Very inventive.”

Nathaniel put an arm around her shoulders to pull her to him. “You would have been safer, that’s true.”

She pressed her face to his chest and laughed so that her shoulders shook and he felt the warmth of her damp breath through his linen.

“If you keep laughing at me we’ll have to have a little talk. One of those discussions you like so much.” He said this against her ear, and felt her laugh shift to a different kind of shudder. “When we’re alone.”

She pulled away and touched her face with the handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve. “Don’t be silly,” she said finally. “We won’t be alone for another two days at least, Nathaniel Bonner. You’ll just have to save your … lecture until then.” And she ducked away before he could pin her there against the wall to prove her wrong, laughing at him over her shoulder.

A great shouting on deck and she froze just like that, the smile wiped from her face. The door was flung open and Elijah appeared there with Jode and Pico close behind.

“We’re heaving-to.” Elijah said it tonelessly, his voice almost lost in the noise coming from the deck: orders shouted, the groaning of the ship, and sailors moving double-time.

“What is it?” asked Splitting-Moon. “Why are we slowing?”

Nathaniel leaned out the window to repeat the question to one of the sailors as he trotted by. He didn’t like the answer he got but he passed it on anyway.

“Customs signaled. They’re coming on board.”

Elizabeth said, “But we are still hours from the border.” She was fighting to keep her tone even, but it didn’t matter—every face in the cabin was still with fear.

“It’s sooner than we expected, that’s true. But it won’t do any good to panic.”

That got him what he needed: she flashed him a hard look and her fear gave way to indignation. Before she could protest he leaned down to look her directly in the eye.

“You’ve stood up to the governor of Lower Canada, to common criminals and Jack Lingo and to peers of the realm, Boots. I think you can manage a few customs agents.” He turned to the others as he reached to take his hat from its nail on the wall. Broad brimmed and low in the crown, for now he must be the Quaker he professed himself to be.

“Cover your heads and put on your sober faces. We’re going up on deck to take the air, all of us.”

Jode made a move toward the false bulkhead, but Elijah stepped in front of him, put a hand on his shoulder and said nothing at all. The boy jerked free, but he could not stare Elijah down. When he dropped his gaze the older man said, “Stay close to Splitting-Moon.”

Elizabeth had dealt with customs officers before, and on this very ship. At that time, with Nathaniel and his father being held in Canada as spies, she had been too distracted wondering how she was going to break them out of gaol before they went to the gallows to take any note of such things.

Now she must pay attention, and she did not like what she saw. They had passed from the southern part of the lake—the Broad, as the captain called it—to this region of islands and shoals to weave their way along the New-York shoreline. To the east a handful of schooners and cutters lay at anchor in a small harbor of an island, among them a ship flying the colors of the American navy and another of the customs patrol, but more disturbing still: a bateau headed their way. She counted six oarsmen, a number of customs officials and marines. Trailing after the bateau were two canoes, but it was the marines that had caught Elizabeth’s attention.

“Marines assigned to customs officials? Is that normal?”

Nathaniel shrugged. “Those canoes worry me more.”

“They look like Kahnyen’kehàka to me,” said Elizabeth. “Don’t you know them?”

“Stone-Bird in the far canoe,” said Nathaniel. “Probably been downlake, trading.”

Elizabeth caught the tone of his voice, tight and uneasy, and looked again to see what she had missed. “Surely that must be good news, if they are headed for Good Pasture? We need not travel alone.”

And she stopped, because at that moment she realized what she was seeing—who she was seeing—in the second canoe. The nearer canoe. Two men, and one of them was Liam Kirby.

Nathaniel caught her elbow as she swayed. “Steady on,” he whispered. “Steady.”

“But—”

He squeezed her arm hard enough to leave a bruise. “Don’t let on.”

Don’t let on. Panic crawled up her spine like milling wasps. She shook her head sharply to clear it and when she looked up again Liam Kirby was still there, paddling toward them in this gilded hour before sunset with the light on his hair, such a deep and startling red that there could be no mistake. A few more moments would bring him to the
Washington.

Elizabeth’s mind raced but she could think of nothing but Liam standing in the damp shadows in Axel Metzler’s tavern and the anger etched deep into the bones of his face when he spoke of his brother. If he had wanted a way to revenge himself upon Nathaniel he would find one here, on this deck.

Nathaniel pulled her closer and spoke so low that she could barely make him out. “I don’t think he’s seen us yet. The angle’s wrong. Come.”

She followed him wordlessly until they stood near the far rail with the voyagers. It was a singular talent Nathaniel had, this ability to move through the world in the worst of circumstances as if he were simply walking across his own porch on a bright day. A talent that Elizabeth would have paid a high price to possess, especially right at this moment. She forced herself to take three deep breaths.

No escape. Nowhere to run. No weapons but their wits. She choked down a hysterical sound, more laugh than scream.

“Ahoy!” Captain Mudge called out to the approaching bateau. He stood at the rail with his hands crossed at his back and his beard fluttering in the breeze like a tattered flag, the very picture of an old sea captain at home on these waters. He seemed not at all worried by the customs officers or the canoes or anything else, but then he could not recognize Liam; he did not realize the trouble within reach.

“What are we going to do?”

“Hold steady.”

A swelling anger swept away her fear. Anger at Liam Kirby, at Nathaniel, at herself most of all. She could not help but look over the faces that had grown so familiar to her already, these people who had withstood so much; she had brought them to this. They should have listened to Jode, who stood at the rail with Selah to one side and Splitting-Moon at the other. The simple strength of their combined concern for him kept the boy there as securely as a child on a tether.

The bateau reached the
Washington
with a bump and the
customs officer came up the rope ladder, small and sharp with bright, darting dark eyes that fixed on the captain. With a great cry he clasped one of Mudge’s hands in both his own and shook it fiercely.

“Jed Allen,” said Nathaniel.

“Another Allen?”

He shrugged, a muscle in his cheek fluttering softly. “You can’t spit on this lake without hitting one of the Allen kin.”

Elizabeth tried to clear her thoughts. Was this good news, or bad? She said, “Will he recognize you?”

“I doubt it. Haven’t seen him in twenty years or more.”

The captain and his cousin were exchanging news, but Elizabeth could not concentrate on anything but that spot where Liam Kirby would first show his face. He would come on board and point them out for imposters and criminals; he would take not only Selah and her child, but all of them. Every one. In her stomach fear roiled like the sea itself, hot and brackish.

Jed Allen turned and leaned over the rail to shout down at the bateau. “Mr. Thistlewaite! I need you here!”

“The clerk,” Nathaniel whispered at her ear. He had stepped back so that he could speak to her and watch what was happening at the same time. “If Kirby does come on board, there’s a chance he won’t give us away, with you here. Just a chance he won’t want to see you go to gaol.”

“Selah.” She hissed the name. “Where can she hide?” Even as she said the words she knew the answer: nowhere. The deck was open to examination; to reach the false bulkhead where the weapons were hid, Selah would have to cross the length of the ship. It would be like waving a flag.

“Here’s the clerk, now. Keep a calm face and don’t turn around.”

The clerk was an elderly man, but he came on board as nimbly as a boy and landed with a soft thump. He carried a great register book in a sling across his chest and a lead pencil stuck in the corner of his mouth like a pipe, but most important was the fact that Mr. Thistlewaite was dressed much as they were, in simple gray, and his hair was cut in a straight line across his forehead. A Quaker, then. Surely there was some good sign to be read in that fact.