Lake in the Clouds (68 page)

“So you’ll have your children right here in eight days’ time to be vaccinated, then. Is that right?”

Greber tilted his head up at him and squinted. “Well, maybe. If none of the ones she pokes today fall over dead or grow horns and a tail.”

There was a ripple of laughter in the room. Nathaniel tensed, and Elizabeth squeezed his hand hard to remind him of their agreement: this was Hannah’s business, and they would leave it to her.

It was Ethan who spoke up first.

“I didn’t fall over dead, Mr. Greber. None of your girls will either. And I’ll drop my breeches to prove I haven’t grown a tail if you want to have a look for yourself.”

An outraged sound rose above the laughter as the widow Kuick pushed her way out of the crowd of people at the back of the room, her heels rapping on the plank floor. In her dusty black silk and black shawl she looked like an agitated crow.

“Foolish boy to speak to your elders thus! Irresponsible parents to allow it.” She sent Kitty Todd a look that might have caused her to faint, if she had not at that moment been looking to her husband.

“Now, Widow—” Richard began, and she cut him off with a chop of her hand.

“You will let me finish, sir! Mr. Greber shows more common sense than you do, Dr. Todd. No thinking person in this village is going to let that—that—Mohawk woman take a knife to them or to their children, and I’m surprised at you for suggesting such a thing. Infecting people with filth taken from a cow. What kind of godless foolery is this?”

A trapper Elizabeth did not recognize shouted, “I say keep the white children out of this. Let the colored do what they want, a little cow shit won’t hurt them anyway.”

Elizabeth kept her attention on Hannah, who had not flinched once while the widow talked. Standing above the crowd on her crate she was serene and unsurprised; she had been prepared for a scene like this.

It was Richard who shouted for silence, and they gave it to him reluctantly.

“Mrs. Kuick,” he said, barely restraining his anger. “Step
aside if you don’t want to be vaccinated and leave the rest of us to do as we see fit.”

“I will not!” She had flushed such a deep color that the tip of her nose looked almost blue. “I will not stand by and watch such an abomination happen before my eyes. And I will not do business with anyone who lets themselves be seduced into this godlessness!”

She looked around the room, her head jerking from face to face so that the soft wattles of flesh at her jaw trembled. The silence drew out and out, and little by little her expression quieted and something of satisfaction took its place.

“You begin to see reason,” she said, drawing her shawl more closely around her shoulders. “You see, Doctor. The good people of Paradise know a witch”—she looked over her shoulder at Hannah and shuddered—“when they see one.”

For a moment, Elizabeth thought that Nathaniel would not be able to hold himself back, and with a curious kind of detachment she wondered if he or Richard would reach the widow first. Then a voice rose up, strong and sure, from the crowd.

“I’ll be vaccinated. Me and my sister both.” Nicholas Wilde held up a hand, and the color that had begun to fade from the widow’s face sprang back again.

“I’ll step up too,” Axel Metzler shouted out, and in his agitation his English began to slide toward his native German. “Bei Gott und Himmel, listen to me, all of youse. If little Hannah Bonner—who never did nothing but help folks—if Hannah is a witch, then I’m Tommy Goddamn Jefferson.”

Voices rose up from all over the room, some louder than others.

Jed McGarrity said, “My Jane ain’t ever had the pox. I’d like her to step up too, although she’s fourteen already and can decide for herself.”

Jane McGarrity was Elizabeth’s oldest student and of the girls the most difficult, but she was proud of her complexion and protective of her beauty. She was also one of the many young women with an eye on Nicholas Wilde. “I’ll come up if my pa wants me to,” she said, ducking her head and blushing prettily.

Old Isaac Cameron thumped the floor planks with his cane until he had everyone’s attention. Then he pushed his way to
stand in the middle of the room, between Richard and the widow. “I ain’t been a boy for seventy years.” He raised his hoarse and cracking voice to a high wobble. “Never had the pox, but all my years I have lived in fear of it. I seen what it does, and I don’t care to ever see it again, specially not when I pick up a looking glass. It’s an ugly old mug, by God, but it’s mine and I like it the way it is.” He rubbed a hand over his freckled pate and then he grinned up at Hannah.

“Come on down here and scratch me, missy. I expect I’ll take a little cow spunk without fainting.” He craned his head to look at the trappers. “Worse than women, all of you.”

The widow said, “Mr. Cameron, you forget—”

The old man poked his cane in her direction and she stepped back, her hands pressed to her heart.

“Now don’t you go shouting at me, Lucy Kuick, you old harridan. Maybe you got other folks around here so scairt that they don’t dare speak their minds but I’m too old to put up with your bitching, mill or no mill. If I want to let Hannah Bonner victualize me then that’s exactly what I’ll do. If you’re set on a throwing fit you’ll find a pile of them fancy chamber pots with flowers painted on the inside over there. See how hard you can toss one of those, we’ll get a little wager going.”

The widow’s red-rimmed eyelids fluttered, but she held on to her composure. “Mr. Gathercole, are you going to allow him to speak to me that way?”

“Don’t go looking to the preacher for help.” Cameron wagged his head. “You got something to say to me then say it, woman.”

“Very well, then,” said the widow. “You’ll burn in hell for this.” She had control of her voice, if not her complexion. She was speaking to Cameron, but her gaze was fixed on Hannah.

“Maybe I will,” said the old man, and he grinned wide enough to show off three lone teeth the color of aged oak. “Maybe so. But there’s lots of reasons to burn, Lucy. We each of us seek out the one that suits us best.”

In the end they had to draw lots to see who would be vaccinated first, and so Nicholas Wilde, Jane McGarrity, and Solange Hench stood in a row with the doctor while Hannah and Curiosity set to work. Enough people had marched out of the trading post behind the widow Kuick that there was space
enough for everyone who was interested to come up close and watch.

Elizabeth and Nathaniel stayed back at the counter with Anna, who could hardly hide her troubled expression.

“What about you folks?” she asked finally. “Aren’t you going to step up too?”

Elizabeth caught Nathaniel’s eye, and when he nodded his agreement she slipped the sleeve of her gown off her shoulder and showed Anna her upper arm.

“Hannah brought some of the serum back with her in a glass vial,” she said. “As she wasn’t sure that it would still be effective she vaccinated all of us with it. If it doesn’t take then we will have to be vaccinated again with fresh serum.”

“But the Lake in the Clouds children marched right up there like they was ready to get scratched,” Anna said. “Does it need doing more than once?”

Nathaniel said, “Once is enough if it takes, but our two’ve got more loyalty than good sense. If Hannah claimed she could sew on heads as good as new, they’d be first in line at the guillotine just to prove her right.”

“So all the Hidden Wolf folks have got scratched then,” Anna said thoughtfully. “I guess that explains why they left so quick. Right after the widow.”

“Anna, what’s got you worried?” said Nathaniel. He leaned toward her across the counter. “That we got vaccinated first or that we got vaccinated at all?”

Elizabeth had always known Anna to be as thoughtful as she was plainspoken; the fact that she could hardly meet Nathaniel’s eye was unsettling.

Finally she said, “I suppose then it makes sense that your Mohawk kin will be coming by to get vaccinated too. Not that it matters if they do, you understand. They get the pox like anybody else. Worse, it seems like. My only worry is that the widow Kuick is looking for any excuse to stir up trouble after that slave got away …” Her voice trailed off.

“What have you heard?” Nathaniel’s tone was calm, but the muscles in his jaw flexed.

“Dye has been talking,” she said. “To the men in the tavern, two, three nights a week when he never used to show his face at all. Like he wants to see how much trouble there is to be made.” Her voice trailed off apologetically.

“Anna, please just tell us what you know,” Elizabeth said quietly.

Anna pushed out a great rush of air and lowered her voice to a whisper that Elizabeth could barely make out. “I don’t know much at all, but I heard some things. There’s a rumor going around that there’s a new child at Lake in the Clouds. A black child, appeared out of nowhere.”

Elizabeth drew a deep breath and then another one. She cast a glance in Curiosity’s direction, hoping that for the moment at least she would be spared the knowledge that Selah’s son was no longer so safe as he had been.

Nathaniel said, “And if there was such a child?”

Anna shrugged. “All Dye wants to talk about is that runaway that nobody could catch. You remember which one I mean? The poster was up here for a while. Liam Kirby said he tracked her to Hidden Wolf but then his dogs lost the trail and he gave up.” She hesitated, and looking in Hannah’s direction, she lowered her voice even further to a rough whisper.

“Me, I think that Kirby’s giving up maybe had more to do with your Hannah leaving for the city. I’ve got eyes in my head and I know you do too.” She paused and looked around once again. “But the fact is, he never did get that slave. Maybe you heard tell that the man she run from was Dye’s brother-in-law. She killed him, but she still belongs by law to the wife. Dye’s sister.”

Nathaniel nodded. “So they say.”

Elizabeth wondered at her husband, that he could sound so detached, as if Selah were still among the living. Which she must be still, to the men who were looking for her and her child.

“Well, she run off pregnant,” Anna finished slowly.

“And Dye thinks that the runaway left her child behind on Hidden Wolf?”

“No,” said Anna, frowning at Nathaniel as if he were a bright child playing at ignorance. “The point is, if there’s a child, it don’t belong to the runaway. It belongs to Dye’s sister.”

There was a moment’s pause, and in that space the sound of Richard Todd’s voice and then Hannah’s, not quite an argument but always on the edge of one: the usual sharp back-and-forth that both of them seemed to need, if not enjoy. Nathaniel
ran a hand down Elizabeth’s arm and threaded his fingers through hers. She was glad of his touch, and leaned into him.

“The whole thing seems pretty unlikely,” Nathaniel said.

“That’s what I told him,” Anna said, more eagerly. “But he’s worked up. Looking for any excuse to go poking around the mountain. Which is why I asked about the Indians coming to Hidden Wolf to be vaccinated. You know how Dye is about anybody with red skin. And the widow’s even worse.”

“What even gave you such an idea that the Mohawk would come to be vaccinated?” Elizabeth asked, trying very hard to keep her voice calm.

Anna’s round, plain face came up suddenly, the brow creased in confusion. “Why, because two Indians I don’t know are out on the porch now with Many-Doves and Bears. Didn’t you see them at the door a few minutes ago?”

Nathaniel had walked off before the last words were out of Anna’s mouth, with Elizabeth close behind.

The doctors at the Almshouse had trained Hannah well; she could answer all his questions while she went through the vaccination procedure, and not lose her concentration or her temper. She was glad of that training now, because Richard Todd questioned her every move, and insisted on full answers about each step before he’d let her continue to the next. He was familiar already with the procedure and so Hannah understood that his questions were not for her, but for Nicholas Wilde and the others who watched closely and listened. If they understood, if they accepted, then the rest of the village would come around eventually.

Nicholas Wilde rolled up his sleeves when his turn came and kept his face turned away from Hannah while she worked, but color crept up his neck and his breathing quickened. With one part of her mind Hannah understood that this was something other than fear, but there was no time to consider why Nicholas Wilde’s heart beat so fast.

When she had finished with him he thanked Hannah politely without looking her in the eye, and left. Jane McGarrity watched him go with an expression that was many things all at once: longing, disappointment, sullen resignation. Then she jiggled impatiently until Hannah was finished with her.

Solange was the youngest and the last to be vaccinated, and
she had questions to ask too, one after the other while she eyed the lancet with growing concern.

“You chatter like a squirrel, child,” Curiosity said in a calm voice to her granddaughter. “There’s no call to be so worried. You saw how easy it goes.”

“If I can stand it so can you,” Ethan offered, and Solange flashed him an insulted look.

“Just close your mouth for a minute and breathe deep,” Hannah said, and she made the first small incision. In practiced motions she accepted the last ivory vaccinator from Curiosity and spread the serum over the cuts. She had just picked up the lancet to make the incisions on Solange’s other arm when the girl straightened suddenly and she leaned away.

“Who’s that?”

“Don’t try to distract us now,” Curiosity said, more sharply this time. “Let Hannah finish, it won’t take but a minute.”

“I’m not trying to distract you,” Solange wailed just as Ethan said, “Hannah, do you know those Indians?”

Hannah finished with the lancet and the vaccinator before she looked over her shoulder. Her father and stepmother were standing just outside the door, and with them were two men she had never seen before.

“They aren’t Mohawk,” said Ethan, craning his neck. “At least they don’t dress like Bears or Nathaniel.”

Just at that moment the taller of the two turned to look in the door.