Lake in the Clouds (37 page)

For a long while after Amanda was gone, Hannah sat on the edge of the fine bed, tracing the heavily embroidered motif of flowers and bright birds with one finger. She was comfortable
here, she should have said that to Amanda, along with the rest of the truth:
I am so comfortable and feel so protected that the idea of leaving this house is overwhelming.

Just outside the door the city was waiting for her. There were people she must see and talk to and learn from, and things for her to teach in turn. Dr. Simon and his institute, Manny Freeman’s world of runaways and blackbirders, and Liam Kirby’s family.

The thought of Liam came to Hannah as quickly and suddenly as a brain fever and with it the understanding that she could not pretend to herself that she was not curious. She could not imagine his home, knew nothing about how he lived, had never heard his wife’s name, and she must know all of those things, somehow. When she left this city she would take those answers with her. So she could put Liam Kirby behind her forever.

On her first night in the Spencers’ home, Hannah practiced a small rebellion by opening her windows to the night air.

The maid who closed them to start with was called Suzannah. She had arrived at the door to collect clothing that needed laundering, and stayed to let Hannah know that she was the housekeeper’s granddaughter, seventeen years of age, and that in the fall she was going to marry a cordwainer by the name of Harry Dabbs.

Hannah had listened politely while Suzannah went about her job of making the room ready for the night, rehanging the gown Hannah had worn to supper, turning down the bed, plumping pillows, positioning the chamber pot, and finally closing all the windows against the night air.

As soon as she was gone, Hannah had opened all the windows again, and while she did that it occurred to her that in all her eagerness to talk, Suzannah had never asked any questions of Hannah at all. Partly, Hannah was sure, because she already knew a lot; the servants were usually better informed than anyone else in the house. But almost certainly she had not asked Hannah anything because it was part of her training; a servant who asked personal questions—even if she happened to be the housekeeper’s granddaughter—would find herself scrubbing pots and out of the reach of guests. Standing at the windows to breathe in the night air that Suzannah had so feared, Hannah asked herself a question instead.

Who, in this great and crowded city, could she really talk to?

She had opened the heavy draperies for good measure, leaving only the lace undercurtains moving uneasily in the breeze. Then she went to bed and lay awake with that one question on her mind.

The answer, of course, was that there was nobody for her to talk to except the five people in this house who were bound to her by familial ties, responsibility, and common history. Once she walked through the doors into the city, she would be truly alone.

Hannah woke at sunrise to the disconcerting sound of her name being called. She sat up in the broad bed and pressed her fingers to her eyes, willing her head to clear, listening hard until she could make sense of it.

“Hannibal!” This was followed by a high giggle. “Watch out now, Hannibal!” A young boy’s voice, but not Ethan or Peter.

The house was perfectly quiet all around her. Whoever Hannibal might be, somebody was looking for him outside. For a moment Hannah wondered if good manners required her to ignore what was going on in the street under her window, but then curiosity got the better of her.

She did not bother with the steps that were meant to help her negotiate the long drop to the floor; instead she slid over the side until her bare feet met not cool planks or a knobby rag rug, but a slightly itchy wool carpet.

Across the street was a small enclosed park called Bowling Green, where they had walked last night after supper while Kitty rested. Hannah had been preoccupied with worry, about Kitty but also about her doctors, who had smiled at her questions with fatherly condescension and never answered at all. She had agreed to the walk because she thought it might clear her head and help her to organize her thoughts, never realizing that to stroll in Bowling Green at dusk was to be on social display.

Every path had been crowded with fashionable people, some of whom the Spencers had only greeted and others who had been introduced to Hannah, Delafields and Gracies and Varicks without end. The ladies had tried not to stare at the sight of a young Indian woman in lace and silk, but many of the gentlemen,
especially those who were old enough to leave social niceties behind them, were less apologetic about their curiosity.

One stooped old man with a great black cigar plugged into the corner of his mouth and wispy hair that floated around his head like fern fronds had been introduced to her as Mr. Henry. He had puffed hard on his cigar while he studied her with narrowed eyes, and his mouth stretched wide in a delighted smile.

“So the Mohawk medicine woman is arrived, eh? Dr. Simon told me all about you, girlie. What, no drums and masks?” And he had laughed uproariously at his own wit. Will and Amanda had both been offended for her and apologetic, but Hannah told them the truth: she preferred Mr. Henry’s coarse honesty and open interest to hooded glances and whispered comments.

At this hour of the morning Bowling Green was all but deserted within its circle of poplar trees just coming into leaf, but the streets were not. The city scavengers were hard at work, collecting rubbish that had been thrown into the street sometime between last night’s walk and now. Three big men with kerchiefs tied across their faces shoveled great piles of offal, drifts of paper, a broken chair, a dead cat, and every other manner of trash into a cart. The cart, the horses, and the men were surrounded by a halo of flies, so thick and busy that Hannah could hear the buzz.

When the scavengers moved on, a whole crowd of young boys stayed behind to empty buckets of water and then sweep the flagstone walkways that separated the fine homes surrounding the park from the cobbled street. The houses were all of stone and brick, three and four stories tall, and Hannah knew that in each of them a legion of servants or slaves were hard at work attending to those hundreds of tasks that must be done while employers still slept.

“Hannibal!” The giggling came again, louder now. A boy about the age of Hannah’s own brother Daniel ran up the sidewalk flicking a wet brush before him like a rattle. She could not see the boy he was after, but she heard muffled laughter and the great splash of a bucket being upturned, it seemed by the squealing over someone’s head.

The door almost under Hannah’s window opened suddenly and with it all laughter was cut off.

“What trouble you two will get up next, I cain’t hardly imagine.” The impatient tone was softened by reluctant amusement. Hannah could not see the housekeeper where she must be standing in the door, but she recognized Mrs. Douglas’s voice.

“Come on now, before you catch your death. What you thinking, getting that woolly head of yours wet in an April chill? Hannibal, you best get on in, too, before Mary decide to use that brush to skin your backside. Come on now, Marcus. Put that bucket away proper, and I’ll be waiting at the kitchen door with a towel. I seen a thousand children in my time, but there never was such boys for foolishness.”

The door closed on her grumbling. Hannah listened, but she could not hear Mrs. Douglas moving through the house. She imagined that the old black woman must be trembling with laughter as she made her way through the halls to the kitchens.

She would come through the swinging doors with her hands on her hips and the women busy with the day’s baking and cooking would pause, floury hands held in midair while they listened to the story of two boys in a water fight out on the public street where God and man could watch. And then Marcus would come to the door and they would laugh while Mrs. Douglas rubbed his head dry with a piece of toweling, talking the whole time about the kind of hardship that waited around the corner for black boys who forgot their manners, duties, and good sense.

The kitchen would smell of yeast, of meat turning on the spit and cornbread in the oven, of vinegar and cinnamon and ginger. The door would open and close as the other servants came and went with well water, fish fresh from the river, onions from the root cellar, eggs slipped from the nest by quick brown fingers. They would stay to talk for a minute, to swallow down cornbread spread with the drippings from yesterday’s joint of beef, to chop parsley for the soup pot.

Most of the servants in this house were black, but none of them were slaves or even indentured; they could move about the city as they pleased once their work was done. No doubt some of them went to the Free School, and knew Manny Freeman.

Hannah looked down again at the empty walkways winding through Bowling Green, studied the houses where wealthy
men still slept behind drawn draperies and closed windows. With sudden purpose, she went to the dressing room and searched out her simplest gown.

She picked out Marcus right away by his damp hair and the gleam in his eye. He was seated at a long trestle table between Peter and Ethan, where all three boys were applying themselves to breakfast with enthusiasm. Hannah was almost sorry when Ethan caught sight of her, jumping up with his spoon in his fist, grinning so joyfully that all of Hannah’s doubts about this journey disappeared. Whatever else might come of their time in the city, Ethan had put his worries behind him for a while at least, and that was worth a great deal.

“Miss Hannah.” Mrs. Douglas greeted her with a polite but puzzled smile. “We can bring your breakfast up to your room if you too hungry to wait. No need to come belowstairs, you realize. Didn’t anybody show you the bell pull in your room?”

All around the crowded kitchen dark eyes were fixed on her, but there was neither friendship nor animosity in any of them. They simply didn’t know what to make of her, an Indian woman who had been welcomed into the house as a guest, a colored woman they must treat as though she were white.

Hannah said, “I would like to sit down and eat with the boys, if that isn’t too much trouble.”

Mrs. Douglas hesitated just long enough for Hannah to realize that the older woman was concerned. No doubt she had seen and heard many things out of the ordinary in the Spencer household, but Hannah knew that this was very possibly the first time that a guest had asked to eat in the kitchen with servants and children.

Hannah said, “I am far more comfortable here than in the dining room. It reminds me of home. Please let me stay.”

They made a place for her at the trestle table, and the housekeeper filled a plate with hot biscuits, ham drizzled with honey, and a great mountain of cornmeal mush topped by a puddle of melted butter. Hannah assured Mrs. Douglas that it was more than she needed or had hoped for, and gradually the kitchen settled back into its normal rhythms.

“Today we are going to Wall Street to see Dr. King’s orangutans,” Ethan announced. “And then to Mr. Bowen’s waxworks. There’s a likeness of President Jefferson.” He went on
outlining a day’s outing that would have exhausted anyone but a child who had been cooped up on a sailing boat for two days.

“I expect we’ll have to pour you into your beds tonight,” said Hannah, and all three boys nodded their heads in cheerful agreement.

“Will you be going along too, Marcus?”

The boy swallowed. “Yes’m. I go wherever Peter goes.” He held up his head proudly. “I’m in training to be a manservant.”

“A manservant do more listening than talking,” called Mrs. Douglas. “That’s a lesson you ain’t learned yet.”

“My father is taking us,” said Peter. “He’s not going down to his offices at all today. You’re coming too, aren’t you, Hannah?”

“I can’t this morning,” she said, cutting into her ham. “I promised Curiosity and Galileo that I would see Manny right away. I have a package for him.” And a message, she thought, and caught Ethan’s eye. He ducked his head to study the tines of his fork.

Ethan was the only other person who knew that part of the reason she had to see Manny was to pass on news of Selah. He also understood very well what a delicate business it was, and he had promised faithfully to never speak of it to anyone. What he didn’t know, of course, was that Liam Kirby had given her another message for Manny, and by far the more worrisome one.

Tell him to step careful, and to stay out of Micah Cobb’s way. Tell him, it wasn’t just luck that sent Vaark to the Newburgh dock.

The clock in the hall chimed seven, and Hannah wondered when she would be able to slip away. Certainly not before she had checked on Kitty, and Will and Amanda had come down to breakfast.

Marcus had stopped eating to watch her, his brow furled. He said, “Miss Hannah, how do you know Manny Freeman?”

“We grew up together,” said Hannah. “He is almost ten years older than me, but I spent a lot of time with his family. Do you know Manny from the Free School?”