Lake in the Clouds (29 page)

Selah had been nursing her son in a patch of sunlight, but she tucked him into the muslin sling she wore across her chest and got up to meet Elijah, touching his hand with her own and examining his face closely.

“Elijah,” Elizabeth said, “you must be thirsty, would you like some water?”

“Thank you.” His voice was hoarse with disuse. Elizabeth had the sense that he was reaching for English words, as if it had been so long since he used his mother tongue that he had misplaced it.

“I’ll show him,” Selah said. When she had taken Elijah off toward the fresh water that came out of the rock face just behind the lean-to, Elizabeth put her hands on her hips.

“Well?”

Nathaniel said, “He’s alone.”

“I can see that. Why is he alone? Where is Splitting-Moon?” She heard the impatience in her voice, and stopped herself. “Did he say anything at all?”

“Not much. I expect he’ll explain as soon as he’s caught his breath.”

Nathaniel sat down next to the cook fire and began to clean the fish with quick, economical movements of his knife. He was worried, she could see that, but his patience had the upper hand right now. Elizabeth crouched down by the fire and poked at it with a stick so fiercely that the sparks leapt up.

“Better the fire than me,” Nathaniel said behind her and she bit back sharp words, knowing very well that he would just smile at her and make her laugh, steal her mood from her that easily.

When Elijah came back to sit with them she could not ask him the hundred questions she wanted to ask; in spite of all the stories they had heard of him, he was a stranger and hungry, and the formalities must be observed. Food offered and accepted, and then news of Paradise.

Nathaniel explained why they had come in Joshua’s place, and Elijah listened, asking a question now and then of Nathaniel or Selah.

When the worst of the story had been told, from Liam Kirby to Ambrose Dye, Nathaniel said, “There’s been no trace of either of them or anybody else for a mile around. I don’t know what that means, exactly, but it looks like you’ll be safe taking Selah back to Red Rock for the time being, at least.”

Elijah looked at them in turn, his dark eyes unreadable. He said, “Dye been in the bush before, looking for us. I doubt he’d come any closer should he try again.”

“That’s good to know,” Nathaniel said. And they sat silently, waiting for Elijah to tell them whatever it was that had brought him here alone. Kestrels called nearby and the baby murmured in his sleep against Selah’s breast. She ran a hand over the curve of his back and then she let out a great sigh, giving up the waiting to ask a question she couldn’t hold back anymore.

“How many of you are there at Red Rock now? Manny couldn’t tell me for sure.”

Elijah blinked at her and Elizabeth saw something frightening there, a sorrow on the verge of brimming over, sorrow enough to fill the world. She stood up suddenly, because some part of her knew already what he was going to say. More disaster: a stray bullet, a forgotten trap, snake bite, rock fall. There was no end to it.

“Splitting-Moon?” She heard her own voice wobble and break. “What is it? An accident?”

He shook his head. “About two weeks ago she met up with a trapper on his way out to the great river,” he said. “Traded him a good beaver pelt for a whetstone, but she brought back a fever with her.” His gaze moved past Elizabeth to Selah.

“Little-John and Digger died, one right after the other. The children went next, all three of them and then Andrew and Parthenia. She was the oldest of us.”

He paused, and Elizabeth thought of the little boy Hannah had described, Splitting-Moon’s son. Elijah’s son. He had lost his only child just days ago, and he sat here telling them the story as if it had happened to somebody else. Because, she knew very well, it wasn’t real to him yet, because he wouldn’t let the loss close enough to claim it as his own, not yet.

He sat straight-backed, and looked at each of them in turn. “All but two of us come down with it, but it didn’t hit everybody the same. Just before I left Splitting-Moon said the fever had burned itself out. But I ain’t sure, maybe she was just trying to get me to go, quiet like. So I don’t rightly know how to tell you how many we are. Maybe nobody at all.”

“Splitting-Moon?” Elizabeth asked again.

There was a convulsive twitching at the corner of Elijah’s mouth. “She took sick,” he said. “Her fever went so high it was hard to touch her for a while. But she’s out of danger. She couldn’t rest easy knowing there was a voyager here waiting. And there’s a message I need to pass on to Joshua, if you’d be so good.”

“What word?” Nathaniel asked softly.

“Not to send anybody new our way. As soon as everybody can walk we’re leaving, heading north,” said Elijah. “We can’t stay in the bush so we’ll head for Canada, whoever’s left.”

Elizabeth sat down again before her trembling legs could give her away. There was something else, something worse
that he wasn’t saying. She could see the same thoughts moving across Nathaniel’s face, but Selah’s expression was more of confusion, and distress. She said, “Why would you want to leave Red Rock?”

“Don’t want to,” said Elijah steadily. “But we don’t have much choice.” He dropped his gaze to the fire. “The fever left Quincy and Splitting-Moon both pure blind.”

“Lord save us,” whispered Selah, rocking her son closer to herself.

Elizabeth felt Nathaniel’s arm come up around her, and she was thankful for that prop. Splitting-Moon had lost her son and her sight.
Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief.

She had last seen Splitting-Moon when she still lived in the longhouse at Good Pasture, in training to be Ononkwa—medicine woman—after her grandmother. Elizabeth could summon Splitting-Moon’s face when she closed her eyes: a serious young woman with a sadness about her. She seemed happy only when she went into the forests to seek the plants and roots and barks she needed for her medicines. Now that had been taken from her, that and so much else. Without her sight she could not leave the bush to trade for the things they must have. Without her son she was still the woman she had been, and she was someone else entirely.

Splitting-Moon was the foundation of Red Rock; she had taught this man and the others how to hunt and move in the forests, how to survive the winter and the rains and the treacheries of the bush. She had led them, but now she would need to be led.

A merciful God. Elizabeth let out a coarse sound and turned her face to Nathaniel’s shoulder, pressed herself against him and then straightened, to find Selah watching her.

“She is your friend,” Selah said.

She needs your help.

No one said the words, but they were there just the same, almost visible in the air. Nathaniel was watching her, as if the decision were hers alone; as if she could say words that would fix this terrible wrong.

Elijah said, “She wouldn’t want you to put yourselves in danger.” He turned to Selah. “I’m here to fetch you back to Red Rock and then we’ll go north. There’s ways into Canada
through the bush, you understand.” He paused, and when none of them said the obvious thing—
how will you follow trails through the bush you don’t know and Splitting-Moon can’t see?
—he continued.

“We can live free in Canada, won’t have to hide no more.” His voice grew stronger, as if he were reciting something he had learned by heart but did not quite believe. “I’m going to take Splitting-Moon to Good Pasture. Some of us will go on to Montréal, but you can do as you please.”

Selah was listening to him, but she was watching Elizabeth. There was understanding there, and compassion. Selah knew what Elizabeth was going to say, and so did Nathaniel. He took her hand and squeezed it.

Elizabeth said, “We will take you as far as Good Pasture.” And to Elijah’s look of confusion: “All of you. All of Red Rock.”

Nathaniel walked the mountain one last time at dusk, to make sure that no one had trailed Elijah to Little Lost, and to prepare himself for the coming argument with Elizabeth.

There were few options before them, and all of them were bad. No matter how many times Nathaniel went over the situation, he always came out to the same conclusion: he could see no way to do this but to start by taking Elizabeth back to Paradise. While he did that, Elijah could bring his people to Little Lost, and then Nathaniel would meet them to start the long walk north to Canada and the Kahnyen’kehàka at Good Pasture. It would take three weeks at least to get them that far, maybe twice that, depending on how much the fever had taken out of them. It could be up to two months before he got back home again, assuming they could keep clear of the law and the army and blackbirders.

Elizabeth was waiting for him outside the caves, alone. From inside the caves came the soft sound of Selah singing to her son, as she had begun to do more often in the last few days.

By the light of the banked embers of the cook fire Elizabeth sat with her arms wrapped around herself, her head leaning to one shoulder as she hummed along with Selah. She moved over to make room for him on the log and then they sat together for a long time without talking. But there was nothing calm about this silence; he could feel her tension growing, almost hear it happening, like the steady winding of a clock.

He put his arm around her, but it took a minute or more for her to give in to it and relax against him. With Elizabeth it was usually best to say the worst straight-out and so Nathaniel pulled her closer and put his mouth against her hair. “I’ll take you back tomorrow, Boots. You don’t want to be away from home for another six weeks.”

She stiffened against him, and then pulled away. The faint light from the dying fire drew her face in simple lines and showed him the one expression he had not foreseen: pure disbelief. She hadn’t even anticipated that she might need to go home without him. Nathaniel braced himself for a longer argument than he had expected.

“Six weeks? Nathaniel, that is ridiculous.”

He drew up short. “I think I can reckon how long it will take, Boots. Fifteen sickly folks won’t be able to trot through the bush, you know.”

Her mouth curled down at the corner. “If we were to walk that far, yes, of course.”

“Were you planning on sprouting wings and flying?” He was working hard to keep his tone easy, but a great wariness had come over him. Elizabeth had a plan; he could see that on her face, and Elizabeth with a plan was a formidable force, a storm on the horizon.

She tilted her chin at him. “There’s no need to be sarcastic, Nathaniel. It’s very simple, really. On the big lake it will take two days to get to the Québec border.”

“The big lake. Elizabeth, even if we could get enough canoes for fifteen people, the law would pick us up on the first day, you know that yourself—”

She gave him a look of utter disgust, and held up her hand to stop him. “Well, of course we should be arrested, if we were traveling in canoes. Give me more credit than that, please.”

Nathaniel saw the furrow between her eyebrows, and knew that she had taken real offense. And maybe with good cause, he admitted to himself. Obviously she had worked out a complicated plan, and she deserved to be heard out. The problem was that with Elizabeth’s plans she usually managed to put herself right in the middle of some kind of danger.

“Go ahead, Boots. I’m listening.”

Some of the irritation left her face. “With an open mind?”

“Aye.” He sighed. “Go on.”

“It’s very simple, really. If we assume that there are indeed blackbirders looking for escaped slaves, then we must present them to the world as something else.”

“And that would be?”

“Quakers,” said Elizabeth, and then more quickly: “A group of Quaker missionaries on their way north to Canada. With you and I as the leaders.”

Nathaniel had a faint idea where this was going. “And how do you plan to turn a dozen blacks who’ve been living hard in the bush into Quakers? The clothes alone—”

“Do you remember the letter I had from Captain Mudge six months or so ago?”

“Grievous Mudge?”

Elizabeth nodded impatiently. “Do you know another? His sister has been widowed and is come to live with him. The sister who was a missionary in Africa for twenty years. Surely you must remember, you laughed so hard when I read the letter to you—”

“The sister who sends barrels of clothing to Africa,” Nathaniel finished. “She put Mudge in a temper because she sent away one of his shirts—”

“All of his shirts, except the one on his back,” Elizabeth corrected. “Mrs. Emory has left her mission, but she is determined to clothe all of Africa by post. But I am getting ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning.”

Nathaniel leaned back on his elbows. “By all means.”

“From what Elijah has told us, the rest of his people must be a few miles east of here, isn’t that right?”

She waited for his nod.

“So it is maybe twenty miles from there to Mariah and the
Washington.
Given their condition, it will take two or three days to take them that far. Two days to sail up to Lacolle. From there another two days’ walk to Good Pasture.”

“You want Grievous Mudge to sail the
Washington
to Lacolle,” Nathaniel said, more to himself than to her. “After his sister dresses us all up as Quakers.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said impatiently. “I think that much must be clear by now.”

“Bear with me a minute here, Boots. I can see Mrs. Emory’s part in this, but tell me why it is that Grievous Mudge would want to risk his schooner and a gaol sentence to run a whole shipload of escaped slaves up to Québec.”

She sat back and looked at him in surprise. “I thought that would be obvious, Nathaniel. He is bored. Why else does he write letters and complain? He will welcome the opportunity to be out on the water again, and the challenge.”