Lake in the Clouds (85 page)

“Save my voice?” The pale eyes blinked at her. “But I must talk, Miss Bonner. I called you here to hear my confession. You are a Catholic, are you not? I understand that Catholics believe that confession is good for the soul.”

Hannah was so surprised that for a moment she did not know how to answer him.

“I was baptized by a Catholic priest,” she said. “But I have never practiced that faith. What I
can
do for you—”

“You can do nothing for me,” he interrupted her in a hoarse whisper. “I will be dead within a day. Sooner, if God has any mercy.”

Hannah folded back the blanket to wipe his neck, grainy with the canker rash; she lifted his head from the pillow and turned it while she studied his face: eyes red-rimmed and already a little sunken from having lost so much fluid. She
helped him drink some water before she turned to her things to get what she would need.

“What is that you’re doing?”

“Making a tea that will give you some ease.”

“Do not waste your medicines on me, Miss Bonner.”

Hannah sat down again, and the bottles in her hands clinked together softly. She said, “I will not sit by idly and watch you die, Mr. Kuick. If you will not let me treat you, then I must go elsewhere. There are many sick in the village; maybe nobody has told you.”

He looked at her very hard, and then, quite slowly, his eyes rolled back in his head and he began to convulse.

Fever convulsions were not uncommon, but Hannah had never dealt with them on her own. By the time they had passed she was drenched in her own sweat.

He fell into so deep a sleep that she had to convince herself at first that he still lived. His chest rose and fell in an uneasy rhythm, and Hannah watched him for a while, counting his respiration and his pulse, counting her own.

When Becca finally returned with the fresh linen they changed the bed together, not speaking at all.

Isaiah Kuick came to himself quite unexpectedly. He said, “Becca, you had best go sit with my mother. I have things to discuss with Miss Bonner.”

“How many are sick in the village?”

Hannah studied him for a moment. The sound of his breathing was by far the worst sign, watery and wheezing. He was not a robust man, but healthy enough; if not for the inflammation in his lungs he would have every chance of surviving scarlet fever.

Hannah said, “Twelve, with the canker rash. There are other patients to see as well. Take some of this now.”

She lifted his head to help him swallow the thin tea. When he was finished he wiped his mouth with his hand and grimaced. “Foul stuff.”

“But effective, for the most part.”

“So now that I’ve taken your tea, will you listen to my confession?”

Hannah bit back an impatient reply. “You should not
overextend yourself,” she said. “You need all your strength to fight your fever.”

Without warning he reached up to take her wrist in a circle of fingers as hot as iron off the fire. “What I need is for you to listen to me. It is in your own best interest, Miss Bonner. Will you not give me my last wish?”

Hannah had begun to think he had fallen asleep again when he began in his wheezing voice.

“You know my wife fears you above all people.”

Hannah nodded warily. “I would say she hates me. Yes, I know that.”

“Watch out for her, Miss Bonner. Once I am gone there will be no one to hold her back. I fear she has already started.”

“Started? Started what?” The skin rose all along Hannah’s spine. “I don’t understand.”

“Early this morning she sent Becca down to the village with two letters to go to Johnstown. Addressed to the circuit judge and the county magistrate. They will have the letters tomorrow, no doubt.”

Hannah sat back in the chair, unable to hide her surprise.

He said, “Becca has been a good friend to me. Sometimes she tells me stories of her family and a grandmother—I forget the name—”

“They called her Froma Anje,” Hannah supplied.

“Becca was fortunate, to have such a family.”

“She still is,” Hannah said, thinking too late of Becca’s sister.

“Becca is a good soul, if a simple one.” His breath came harder, and Hannah helped him sit up against the pillows.

“You were saying about the letters—”

He nodded. “I don’t know what she wrote, but I fear it will be more trouble for you.”

“But what—”

“Let me talk, I don’t know how long my strength will last. You heard that the strongbox is gone, and with it all the money. When I’m dead Jemima will be left here with my mother and no way to get away from her.” Something of real humor passed over his face. “You can see why she would be desperate.”

“She will have her child,” Hannah added. “Your child.”

He turned his face away from her for a long moment. When he spoke again his voice was very low.

“You know only the worst of Ambrose Dye,” he said. “There is no reason for you to believe me given what you saw, but once he was not so hard-hearted.”

There was a longer silence. Finally Hannah said, “He was a friend to you.”

Isaiah let out a rough sound, something that might have been a laugh. “Yes, he was that. Listen now, and mark me. It was my fault, what happened to Reuben and I must take responsibility for it before I die.”

He had turned to look at her, his eyes moving over her face as if he would find some answer there. Forgiveness or understanding; even curiosity, something, now that he had said the words. Hannah could see what he wanted from her but she could not give it.

“Go on,” she said quietly.

He took a deep breath that caused his whole body to shake. “It happened in a fit of rage. Ambrose threw the sack and it broke all over the boy—” He hesitated, and raising a hand, he pressed it to his eyes.

“It all happened so fast—that is not meant to be an excuse. There is no excuse,” he added wearily. “And then I made it worse. I should have called the constable in. It was an accident, after all. But I was afraid.”

Hannah kept herself very still while he wept like a tired child. She had the sense that if she made any noise at all, reached out to him in any way, he would not be able to go on. And she needed to hear what he had to say. For Cookie’s sake, for everyone’s.

“You must think I was worried about Ambrose, what might have happened to him. But I was worried for myself. Always for myself, first and last.”

He shook his head suddenly as if to clear it, pulled himself up higher on the pillow and pointed toward a small ivory box that sat on the dresser. “There’s a letter there that I wrote on the day of Reuben’s burial.”

“What does it say?”

“Many things, but the most important is this. Whatever rough justice Ambrose met he deserved. They should not hang for it.”

“Hang.” Hannah echoed the word, hollow-sounding and harsh. “You think Jemima would—”

“Probably not,” he said, laying his head down again. “She would not throw away so much capital, not even to get back at you. Miss Bonner, I am feeling very faint so please listen. I did Cookie and the others a great wrong, but this way perhaps I can redeem myself a little, in their eyes at least. No harm should come to any of them. You will use the letter, if it comes to that?”

“Yes.” Hannah nodded. “If I must I will use it.”

There was so much Hannah didn’t understand, but another part of her, the part that was a healer first saw the tripping pulse in his throat and knew that he would not stand any more strain.

And still he crooked a finger until she bent her head closer and took in the smell of him: hot sweat, sweet decay.

“You still don’t know why I am asking this of you,” he whispered. “Cookie was not the only person wronged by Ambrose Dye,” he said, his voice trailing away. “You will find out soon enough, if my guess is right.”

The letter was two sheets folded and sealed with wax, under which he had written in a neat hand: “I, Isaiah Simple Kuick, sound of mind and body, do hereby swear by the Almighty God and all that is Holy that what I have put down on these pages is true. Witness to my signature: Rebecca Kaes, of Paradise on this 24th day of April 1802.”

Becca had signed in a round hand. On the other side, where an address would have been written, he had copied out some lines:

When Hannah left Isaiah’s chamber an hour later with the unopened letter in her pocket, her patient had fallen into a sleep so deep and pure that Hannah took Becca aside to warn her what was to come.

Becca’s face filled with a terrible sadness. Her eyes reddened,
and Hannah felt a great warmth toward the girl, who had found a way to be a friend and comfort to a difficult and tormented man.

“Should I wake the widow?” She plucked nervously at her sleeve. “She’ll want to take leave of him. Won’t she?”

“You must do as you see fit,” Hannah said. “But I would be surprised if he woke again. If you know where his wife might be …” She let the sentence drift away.

Becca blinked like a confused child, as if she had forgotten that her master had a wife.

“His wife, Jemima,” Hannah said. “Jemima should be with him.”

Becca nodded, and left her there on the doorstep.

A summer storm drew itself around the village of Paradise and swaddled it as tightly as a fussy newborn. Rain, warm and soft, washed the dust from the leaves of the apple trees in Nicholas Wilde’s orchard and wet the heads of the mourners gathered around his sister’s grave. Rain turned the footpaths to mud that clung to shoework and made hems drag heavy. All over the village doors that would normally stand open in the summer were closed tight against the rain.

Even indulgent mothers who sent the youngest out to play in warm rain to save the trouble of a weekly wash closed their ears and ignored the complaints of bored children. Every parent in the village divided their nightmares between Indian raids and canker rash, and took the rain as a sign from God that they were meant to keep their children close.

In the households where the rash had already struck, mothers tended feverish children and waited for the next visit from Dr. Todd or Hannah Bonner, starting up at the sound of human footsteps as if they were angel wings. By the third day of the fever, when it was clear who would survive and who might not, the rhythm of the visits changed. The two doctors divided their time among four households: the Camerons, where old Isaac scrabbled for a hold on life and his grown sons drank away their fear, and the families where scarlet fever had put down taproots: LeBlanc, Ratz, and Hindle.

The LeBlancs were the family in the most trouble. The
newborn daughter had died on her second day but Molly, ever persistent and reluctant to leave her boys, rallied once and then fell into a last delirium that seemed to take no end. The little cabin filled up with the stink of childbed fever and the boys—even the two youngest still feverish with the canker rash—could not be kept inside. They climbed out windows to stand crying in the rain, and ignored their grandmother’s threats and pleas alike.

A fine mist settled and stayed at Lake in the Clouds, threading through trees and turning familiar corners into caves to be explored. It seemed as if Elizabeth had used some witching spell to call down the rain and mist to bind them all to the mountain. Isolated as they were from the village, the only news came to them when Hannah returned home on a rare visit. It was from Hannah they heard the names of the dead: Isaiah Kuick, Esther Greber, Prudence Ratz, Isaac Cameron.

Lily followed Elizabeth around, talking and drawing and taking lessons in arithmetic and history without complaint when it could not be avoided. She even practiced her knitting and pretended to enjoy it, and still her mother didn’t seem to take note of how unusually cooperative and good she was being. It was aggravating, but it also frightened Lily, the way her mother seemed to dream-walk her way through the day. Lily went to her father and was comforted, but it was Many-Doves who seemed to understand best of all what was wrong and could quiet Lily’s fears.

“Your little brother sits heavy on her lap just now,” Many-Doves told her. “She doesn’t know what to do with her sorrow, and she has let her anger turn inward, where it festers.”

The question Lily asked was the one Daniel would ask when she related all this to him. “Will she get better when the epidemic is past?”

“No,” Many-Doves said, pausing in her work to look Lily directly in the eye. “That will be no more than a beginning.”

Nathaniel spent the wet dark days of the epidemic mending broken tools and making a new stretching frame for Many-Doves, keeping a watchful and worried eye on his wife, and waiting for his eldest daughter’s next visit.

At night he held a sleepless Elizabeth in his arms. They
spoke of many things, all of them unimportant. When he tried to turn the conversation to other matters she stiffened.

“A quarantine is nothing unusual, Nathaniel,” she said to him. “Even a self-imposed quarantine. It is the sensible thing to do.”

“You know, Boots,” he said in a conversational tone that he hoped would hide his frustration. “You know, just to use the word ‘sensible’ doesn’t make a thing true.”

She sat up in the dark. He could just make out the shape of her face and back, but when he reached out she moved away.

“Once again,” she said firmly. “Let me say this. From everything Hannah has told us this is not a very bad outbreak. It is a matter of days, nothing more, and then we can go on in our normal fashion.”

Nathaniel said, “Why do you send the children to their beds when their sister comes home? You know she wouldn’t come near us if she had any thought it might be dangerous.”

“It’s merely a precaution,” Elizabeth said wearily. “Nothing more.”

On the morning of the fourth day Jed McGarrity came up the mountain just as the sun showed itself. Elizabeth went very still when they heard the sound of his hello from out front, but this time she was not alone. Nathaniel went out to greet Jed sure in his gut that the man was here to tell them that Hannah was sick with the canker rash. But the sight of McGarrity’s easy smile eased his fears. Nathaniel drew in a deep breath and let it out again.