Lake in the Clouds (78 page)

Go ahead,
Jemima thought.
Kill her. Start with her; grant me that much.

Instead he spat on the widow’s bowed head.

She screamed to feel his spittle on the back of her neck, jerked convulsively, and fainted.

The black Indian tucked the musket into the wide leather belt next to a knife sheath and touched the pouch around his neck. At the door he looked back at them, his face with the broad flat nose and wide mouth completely and utterly blank of anything that might be called human.

“Stay here until you hear two shots,” he said. His English was accented like any Indian’s, blunt sounds and chopped-off words. “If you try to leave this room before you hear those shots, the men keeping watch outside will kill you and set fire to the house. If you do as I say no harm will come to you.”

When he had closed the door behind himself Becca let out a long and wavering sigh and then burst into noisy tears.

“Calm yourself,” said Isaiah. “You must calm yourself.”

Jemima sent him a disdainful look and began to inch her way to the windows on her knees.

“Don’t!” Georgia cried out. “Don’t! They’ll kill us sure!”

“Be quiet, you cow,” Jemima snapped. “Somebody get over there and blow out the candles so I can see.”

It was Becca who did as she said, moving in odd little hops. When the light was extinguished Jemima put her face to the window and concentrated. The sun had set not a half hour ago, but there was no moon and she could see very little.

He was there, just below the house, looking toward the village
where the trading post blazed with light and people moved about on the porch. He was there, and not alone; that much had been true.

There were two men with him, but she could make out little about them except that they were Indian.
Bonner’s Mohawks,
she whispered to herself. Maybe something good would come of this night after all, if it drove the Mohawks off Hidden Wolf once and for all. That pleasant thought was interrupted by another one, less welcome.

What had happened in the two hours they had spent captive in this room?

Two of the men below the window raised arms above their heads and single shots rang out, one after the other, the flash from the muzzles almost enough to blind. Almost enough, and still Jemima saw so clearly: three men, two of them black. The third white, with hair such a deep and true red that it could never be forgotten or mistaken.

Jemima blinked, and Liam Kirby and the Indians were gone.

Hannah had just used the last of the fresh virus to vaccinate Anna McGarrity when two shots rang out in the night.

“Christ Almighty, what was that?” shouted Axel Metzler.

The vaccinator slipped from Hannah’s fingers, spraying the precious clear liquid over the floor but it didn’t matter: Anna was already gone, running with the rest of the crowd, a hand fluttering over her shoulder as if in apology.

“One arm’s better than none!”

Hannah caught her father’s eye, her grandfather’s, and then Strikes-the-Sky, who stood near the door with Strong-Words while the others pushed out into the night. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
Yes, this is right.

Lily sidled up next to her. She was trembling a little, and Hannah took her hand and squeezed it, just as Elizabeth, Many-Doves, and Pines-Rustling came up on Lily’s other side. The women standing together, and the men with weapons at the ready. This was right too, but the comfort it gave was thin and cold.

“Miss Bonner? Dr. Todd?” Ezekiel spoke quietly. He had stepped to the front of the small group of blacks. “Is it all right if we go on back to the mill now?”

Richard Todd cast a suspicious glance from Ezekiel to Hannah and then to Strikes-the-Sky.

“You can go, Zeke. All of you can go.”

“We thank you kindly for your help, Dr. Todd, Miss Bonner.” Cookie smiled, a fierce smile. A triumphant smile, thought Hannah.

Cookie said, “Don’t recall when I passed a more pleasant evening.”

“What do we do now?” Lily wanted to know.

“We set right here and wait until we get some news,” said Nathaniel. Elizabeth caught his eye and he pointed with his chin to the rocking chairs and stools by the cold hearth. “Might as well be comfortable, Boots.”

What he wanted, Elizabeth could see very well, was for them to remove themselves to the back of the room where they would be better protected from whatever was about to come through the door. She had seen Nathaniel in every kind of situation outside of direct battle, and the uneasy thought came to Elizabeth that she was finally seeing that now.

A preternatural calm had come over him; when he moved his whole being seemed to shimmer with a focused energy as cold and hard as gunmetal. The others—Hawkeye, Strong-Words, Strikes-the-Sky—were just the same. For once even Richard Todd seemed to be paying attention, jolted finally out of the shell of boredom and irritation that he used to keep himself separate from everyone.

“What’s this about, Bonner?” he asked.

It was Hawkeye who answered him. “We don’t know, exactly. From the sound of it something’s going on up at the mill. If they ain’t calling for you I don’t expect any blood’s been spilled.”

Beside Elizabeth, Hannah tensed almost imperceptibly.

Elizabeth took Lily on her lap and thought of Daniel, safe away in the endless forests with Runs-from-Bears and Blue-Jay.

“Maybe it’s a good thing that Curiosity and Galileo have stayed away so long,” Lily said softly. “Curiosity is always telling me she’s getting too old for such excitement.”

Elizabeth looked down at her daughter in surprise. In her arms Lily was strumming with an energy that seemed too large
and bright for such a small being; she would not have been surprised to see her glowing like a star. The child wasn’t afraid, and why should she be? Here in her mother’s arms with these good men standing between them and whatever was out there in the dark, she was perfectly safe. Elizabeth pulled her closer.

From far away the sound of men’s voices raised not in anger but alarm, agitation, rough laughter.

Some of the edginess went out of the room. Another five minutes passed, and then ten. They heard the tavern door open and shut.

“Axel?” called Hawkeye. “That you?”

Charlie LeBlanc stuck his head in the adjoining door. “He’s still up at the mill. Nathaniel, Hawkeye, what are you boys still hanging around here for? You missed all the fun. Some Indians tied the widow Kuick up and left her trussed like a hog on her own parlor floor.”

All the men let out a sigh, the tension running away from them like rainwater.

“What Indians?” asked Hawkeye.

Charlie had a tankard in his hand and he paused to take a good swallow. “Black skinned, or so say the Kuicks. Jemima says she never saw any of them before, and Becca didn’t recognize them either. The widow’s giving the details to Jed McGarrity right now.”

“How many?” asked Richard Todd, looking more interested now.

“Three or four, but nobody got a real look. One of them stayed in the parlor while the others went through the house. Looks like all they took is the strongbox and a carving knife with an ivory grip.” A thoughtful look passed over his otherwise guileless expression.

“Bad luck for the widow that the slaves was all down here getting vaccinated.”

“Bad luck indeed,” said Richard Todd grimly, shooting Nathaniel a sharp glance. “And where was Mr. Dye while all of this was happening?”

“That’s the other strange thing,” Charlie said, scratching his chin. “No sign of him anywheres. They searched the house and the mill and some of the men took torches and are still looking around outside but there’s no trail. No blood or sign of a struggle either. Like he just disappeared. Say …”

He looked at each of the men in turn. “You don’t think he could’ve been scheming with those Indians, do you? Maybe it was Dye who took the strongbox.”

Elizabeth’s mind raced. She hadn’t thought of Jode for days and now he stood before her as she had last seen him, on the day that Selah died. A black-skinned Mohawk. It must be Jode, but how? Were the rest of the Red Rock people here with Manny? Why? She scrambled so hard to make sense of these strange pieces of information that Lily had to pinch her cheek before she realized her daughter had been asking her a question.

With her mouth against her mother’s ear, Lily said, “They took Dye, didn’t they, Mama? We’ll never see him again.”

Cookie was at the hearth in the morning as if nothing had happened. For a few long minutes Jemima watched the old woman stir pots and check the biscuits as they browned. She was devious, and Jemima had underestimated her. That much she must admit, at least to herself.

All the work fell on Cookie alone this morning. Georgia had left at first light with her things tied in a sheet, willing to walk back to Johnstown if that’s what it took to get away from Paradise; Becca was sitting with the widow, who had taken to her bed with a bottle of laudanum clutched in one trembling hand. But Cookie didn’t seem to mind the extra work and in fact she looked tired, but satisfied. She hummed to herself, a melody Jemima didn’t recognize.

Isaiah had been out all night with the search party that was tracking the thieves, except of course he wasn’t. All that interested him was finding Ambrose Dye, who had disappeared so completely and quietly.

Down at the mill the slaves sat idle; they would sit that way all day until Dye came back, or Isaiah collected himself and remembered that they needed direction. Jemima imagined them sitting around grinning at one another. How sweet revenge must be, doubly sweet to have been bought so cheaply. Dye gone; the Kuicks robbed of every penny, and not one of them would hang.

When Jemima thought of the strongbox her insides clutched so hard that a wave of nausea rose up in her throat. All night long she had stared at the ceiling and asked herself how they had managed it. The answer came back every time like an echo:
with Liam Kirby’s help.
How she would like to see him hang, but that would never happen, not unless the search party caught up with him. And then what would he say to save himself, what stories would he tell?

Sick with rage, Jemima had turned her face to the pillow and torn a hole in the linen with her teeth.

Now, standing in the doorway she said, “What are you planning to do with all that money, Cookie? Going to buy yourself a new headscarf or two?”

There wasn’t even a ripple of response; it was as if the woman had gone deaf overnight. Jemima had promised herself that she’d hold her temper, and so she wound her hands in her skirt and stayed where she was.

“I’ll say this much, it was a masterful plan. I think the part I like best is all of you going down to the trading post on Dye’s orders. Everybody saw you there so nobody can say you had any hand in what happened, and Dye’s not here to call you liars. I don’t suppose they’ll ever find him—” She paused, and thought of Liam Kirby, felt herself flushing.

Cookie glanced over her shoulder, her expression blank but a flashing behind her eyes. Bitter triumph; sour satisfaction. Pity.

“Glad to be rid of Dye, ain’t you?”

Jemima’s heart rabbited under her bodice, so fast that it echoed at her wrists and at the base of her throat where sweat trickled. Cookie’s expression, white hot and knowing.

Her own voice coming from far away, “I wondered—” And she stopped.

“You wondered if I knew?” For a long time there was no reply at all, and then Cookie straightened. She wiped her hands on her apron as she studied Jemima.

“I been with the widow since she was sixteen years old and I was just a few years younger,” she said, her voice strong and steady. “Every day for near fifty years I been cooking for the woman and looking after her. When Isaiah was born it was me that put him to the breast, right alongside my Ezekiel. I stood by and listened to her bargain for a better price when she sold
my man away from me and our boys. Reuben wasn’t a month old. You know why she sold Samuel? Because she didn’t want me having no more children. I was too old, she said. Wasn’t seemly. She said that to my face.

“It was me that nursed old Mr. Kuick through the gout and washed his skinny backside every day while he lay there dying of the Frenchman’s disease, whispering things. Oh, he hated her even worse than I did, but he hid it good. Old Kuick and me, we had that in common.

“I watched Isaiah grow to a man, I watched him
hard.
Let me tell you something, Mrs. Jemima Kuick. There ain’t nothing about this family I don’t know. Nothing.”

Her large eyes, perfectly black, blinked once and again and then they settled on Jemima’s waist.

“Now I got something to say, and then I’ll be quiet. Mr. Dye sent all us slaves down to the trading post to be vaccinated against the pox. We did as we was told, good niggers every one of us. What happened here while we was gone, where the overseer went, who those Indians were, who took the strongbox—I don’t know nothing about any of that.”

She turned her back on Jemima and picked up a spoon.

Jemima could not help the trembling in her voice, but neither could she walk away. She said, “Maybe the law says we can’t hang you without proof, and maybe we can’t even sell you south the way you deserve, but we can sell you. There are worse places to be in New-York State, and I guarantee you’re going to find that out firsthand.”

Cookie’s smile was cold when she looked over her shoulder at Jemima. “My, my,” she said softly. “Ain’t you got a lot to learn. Don’t you try to make the widow choose between me and you. You won’t like what comes of it.” Another glance at Jemima’s thickening waist. “You won’t like it at all.”

Her head throbbed as if somebody had hit her with a rock, but Jemima did not go to her bed. Instead she went to the office and stood on the threshold of an open door that had always been locked to her.

The walls were lined with shelves laden with ledgers, file boxes marked: correspondence, lumber, bills payable, mill purchase.

She spread the papers from this last one over the desk, moving a stand of quills, a bottle of ink, tightly corked, a stick of sealing wax on a square of glass, a candle box, a flint box. A half-empty bottle of brandy, with a dirty glass beside it. A sprinkling of tobacco; slanting light laced with dust motes.