Dawn on a Distant Shore (2 page)

Mac Stoker, Irish by
birth, captain and owner of the
Jackdaw

Horace Pickering,
captain of the
Isis
, a merchantman

  Aboard the
Jackdaw

Anne Bonney Stoker
(granny), Mac Stoker's grandmother

Connor, his first mate

Captain Christian Fane
of the
Leopard

  Aboard the
Isis
(the Lass in Green)

Hakim Ibrahim Dehlavi
ibn Abdul Rahman Balkhi, ship's surgeon

Charlie, the Hakim's
cabin boy and servant

Mungo, another cabin
boy and Charlie's brother

Margreit MacKay, wife
of the first officer

Adam MacKay and
Jonathan Smythe, first and second officers

  Solway Firth and
Dumfries

Robert Burns,
exciseman

Dandie Mump, innkeeper
at Mump's Hall

  At Carryck and
Carryckcastle

Alasdair Scott, 9th
Lord Scott of Carryckcastle, 4th Earl of Carryck

Jean Hope,
housekeeper; Jennet, her daughter

MacQuiddy, house
steward

Monsieur Dupuis, a
permanent houseguest

Some of the earl's
men: Richard Odlyn; Dugald and Ewen Huntar; Thomas, Lucas, and Ronald
Ballentyne; Jamie Dalgleish; Ebenezer Lun

Monsieur Contrecoeur,
a visiting French wine merchant

Madame Marie Vigée and
Mademoiselle Julie LeBrun, cousins and traveling companions to Contrecoeur

Leezie Laidlaw, a
widow

Gelleys Smaill, a
retired washerwoman

Minister Willie Fisher

  At Moffat

Flora, Countess of
Loudoun, an orphan

John Campbell, 4th
Earl of Breadalbane, chief of the Glenorchy line, and Flora's guardian

Walter Campbell,
illegitimate son of Breadalbane by an unknown lady, appointed by his father as
the curator of the Loudoun holdings

Isabel Campbell, née
Scott, his wife

         The Family
Tree

         for the
Carryck Line

To the Earl of Carryck

Carryckcastle

Annandale

Scotland

My Lord,

Allow me to report
success: at long last I have located the man I believe to be your cousin. He is
known as Dan'l Bonner, called Hawkeye by his associates, Indian and White. Even
if there were not plentiful documentary evidence that he is your uncle Jamie
Scott's son by Margaret Montgomerie, the sight of him alone would convince anyone
that he is indeed a Scott of Carryck.

Bonner resides on the
northernmost frontier of the State of New-York, where he was raised--as you
always believed--by ationatives. I trust you will be pleased to learn that he
took as guidwife a Scotswoman (now deceased), whose father was, by fortunate
circumstance, a Munro cadet of Foulis. She bore a son, called Nathaniel, now
some thirty-six years of age, in robust health andwitha new guidwife in hopeful
expectation. Both father and son have made their living as hunters and trappers
in the wilderness that the Natives call the endless forests, between this place
and the Mohawk Valley. That is where I found Nathaniel, who then directed me
here to Montréal. He is a likely young man, and I believe you will be well
pleased with him.

Before I can carry out
the task entrusted to me and convey Bonner and his son home to Carryck, Dan'l
must first be disengaged from the military garrison where he is currently being
held for questioning, in the matter of a large shipment of the King's gold,
missing for some forty years.

You see that the
family resemblance is more than simple physiognomy.

I have had word from
Pickering, who has docked the
Isis
at Halifax, but first getting to
Bonner is a very complicated undertaking, and one which may require some
drastic steps. The whole venture is made even more complex by the interference
of the Lieutenant Governor, Lord Bainbridge. My Lord will remember Pink George
from the unfortunate incident with the pig, I trust. He, at any rate, has not
forgot it.

  Yours at command, My
Lord

  Angus Moncrieff

  Montréal, this third
day of January,

  1794

To Mr. Nathaniel
Bonner

Paradise, on the West
Branch of the Sacandaga

State of New-York

Sir--

With the prodigious
help of Rab MacLachlan and your excellent directions, I have found your father.
Unfortunately, the Lieutenant Governor had found him first and he paces a cell
in the garrison gaol while being questioned on a matter referred to only as the
"Tory gold," details of which MacLachlan scruples to share with me.
While I have seen your father for only a moment I can report that he seems to
be in good health. A message in two parts:

First, a young man
called Otter, of the Mohawk (or Kahnyen'kehâka as I understand they call
themselves), was arrested with him, but is unharmed. Second, your father
believes that a "visit to the pomkin patch" is the only way to
resolve his current difficulties.

If, as I suspect, this
means that you will be coming to Montréal, I beg you to call on me in my rooms
in the rue St. Gabriel. You will find me to be an experienced and willing
assistant in the garden. I ask only for your father's ear for an hour to
present my lordship's case.

I believe your lady's
time must be close at hand. Please allow me to send my very best wishes for her
safe delivery, and for the continuing health of your entire family.

  Your Willing Servant

  Angus Moncrieff

  Secretary and Factor
to the Earl of Carryck

  Montréal, this third
day of January,  1794

In the middle of a
blizzard in the second half of the hardest, snowiest winter anyone in Paradise
could remember, Elizabeth Middleton Bonner, sweat soaked, naked, and adrift in
burning pain, wondered if she might just die of the heat.

Once again she grabbed
the leather straps tied to the bed frame to haul herself forward, and bore down
with all her considerable strength.

"Come, little
one," sang the girl who crouched, waiting, at the foot of the bed. Her
ten-year-old face was alight with excitement and fierce concentration, her
bloodied hands outstretched, beckoning.

From a basket before
the warmth of the hearth came the high, keen wail of Elizabeth's firstborn: a daughter,
just twenty minutes old.

"Come,
child," crooned Hannah. "We are waiting for you."

We are all waiting for
you.

In the grip of a
contraction that threatened to set her on fire, Elizabeth bore down again and
was rewarded with the blessed sight of a crowning head. With shaking fingers
she touched the slick, wet curls and her own flesh, stretched drumtight: her
body on the brink of splitting itself in two.

One last time, one
last time, one last time
. She strained, feeling the child flex and turn, feeling
its will, as strong as her own. Elizabeth blinked the sweat from her eyes and
looked up to find Hannah's gaze fixed on her.

"Let him
come," the girl said in Kahnyen'kehâka. "It is his time."

Elizabeth pushed. In a
rush of fluid her son, blue-white and already howling, slid out into her stepdaughter's
waiting hands. With a groan of relief and thanksgiving, Elizabeth collapsed backward.

For one sweet moment,
the wailing of the newborns was louder than the scream of the blizzard rampaging
through the endless forests. Their father was out there, trying to make his way
home to them. With her arms crossed over the warm, squirming bundles Hannah
laid against her skin, Elizabeth muttered a prayer for Nathaniel Bonner's safe
delivery from the storm.

As Elizabeth labored,
the small handful of farmers and trappers with the good sense to be stranded by
the blizzard in Paradise's only tavern sat huddled over cards and ale, waiting
out the weather. While the winds worked the rafters like starving wolves at a
carcass, they told stories in easy, slurred voices, but they watched their cards
and tankards and the long, straight back of the man who stood, motionless, at
the window.

"Strung as tight
as my fiddle," muttered one of the card players. "Say something to
him, Axel."

Axel Metzler shrugged
a shoulder in frustration, but he turned toward the window. "Set down,
Nathaniel, and have a drink. I broke out my best ale, here. And the storm won't
be letting up for you staring at it."

"Women will have
babies at the worst times," announced the youngest of the men solemnly.

"Now, what would
you know about it, Charlie? You got a wife hid away somewhere?"

"A man don't need
a wife of his own to see that it's damn hard luck to have run into this weather."

The storm raised its
voice as if to argue. The roof groaned in response, and a fine sifting of dust
settled over the room and the uncovered tankards.

Axel plucked the pipe
from his mouth in disgust and pointed his tattered white beard toward the heavens,
exposing a long neck much like that of a plucked turkey. "Shut up, you old
Teufel
! Quiet!"

The winds howled once
more, let out a longish whine, and fell silent. For a moment the men stared at
each other and then Axel tucked his pipe back in the corner of his mouth with a
satisfied grunt.

A woman appeared at
the door from the living quarters just as the man at the window turned. The light
of the fire threw his face into relief: half shadow, all worry, his high brow
furrowed and his mouth pressed hard. In his hand was a crumpled sheet of paper,
which he tucked into his shirt with one hand while he reached for his mantle with
the other.

"Curiosity?"
he asked, his voice hoarse with disuse.

"I'm right here,
Nathaniel." Long and wiry, straight backed in spite of her near sixty
years, Curiosity Freeman moved briskly through the room, her skirts snapping
and swirling. The hands adjusting the turban that towered above her head were
deep brown against the sprigged fabric. She turned to a boy who sat near the fire,
big boned, ginger haired, and pale with sleeplessness. "You there, Liam
Kirby. Look lively, now. You fetch me my snowshoes, will you?"

He sprang up, rubbing
his eyes. "Yes'm."

Axel stood and
stretched. "Good luck, Nathaniel! Give Miz Elizabeth our best!"

Nathaniel raised a
hand in acknowledgment. "Thank you, Axel. Jed, I was supposed to send
Martha Southern word, would you take care of that for me?"

"I will. Tomorrow
we'll wet the child's head, proper like."

"We'll do that,
God willing."

Liam had gone out onto
the porch, but the older woman hung back to put a hand on Nathaniel's arm.
"Elizabeth's strong, and Hannah's with her. That girl of yours has got the
touch, you know that."

She's only ten years
old.

Nathaniel could see
that thought sitting there in the troubled lines that bracketed Curiosity's
mouth. "Elizabeth asked for you. She wanted you."
And me. I should
be there.

Curiosity squinted at
him. Never the kind to offer false comfort, she nodded, and followed him outside.

Strung out in single
file with Nathaniel leading and Liam bringing up the rear, they left the village
on snowshoes. They carried tin lanterns that cast dancing pinpricks of light over
the new snow: a scattering of golden stars to match the fiery ones overhead.
The night sky had been scrubbed clean; the moon was knife edged and cold, as
cold as the air that stung the throat and nose.

Nathaniel glanced over
his shoulder now and then to gauge Curiosity's pace. Thus far she showed no
signs of tiring, in spite of the late hour and interrupted sleep.
Frontier women
,
his father often said.
When one of their own is in need, they can set
creation on its ear.

He had set out to
fetch her almost twenty-four hours ago. She was his father-in-law's housekeeper,
but Curiosity Freeman was more than that: Elizabeth's friend, and his own, the clearest
head in the village and the closest thing Paradise had to a doctor since
Richard Todd had decided to spend the winter in Johnstown; she had always been
a better midwife, anyway. With a midwife's sense of timing, she had been ready
for him, her basket packed. She wiped the flour from her hands and arms and
passed the kneading over to her daughter, calling out to her husband, Galileo,
that she was on her way. Judge Middleton was still abed, and they left without
disturbing him.