The Endless Forest (33 page)

“But what about Gabriel Oak?” Birdie asked and her voice had a tremble to it. “How could he not come back?”

Curiosity was looking at Lily. “You know, Lily, don’t you? You guessed it.”

Lily looked from Curiosity to her mother and back again. “Yes, I suppose I did. I told Simon a long time ago that Gabriel Oak was most likely my real grandfather.”

For a moment Elizabeth thought Lily would want to tell them how she had come to such a conclusion, as Elizabeth herself had in that last summer Gabriel Oak spent in Paradise. Like Lily, Elizabeth had talked to Nathaniel about it, but otherwise kept the idea—one that had grown
from suspicion to a certainty over the years—to herself. But then it seemed Lily was as impatient as Elizabeth was to hear the rest of what Curiosity had to say. To confess.

Lily said, “He did come back, didn’t he. He came back and you told him she was gone. Did he give you a letter?”

“Yes, he did,” Curiosity said. “He come back here at Christmastime, couldn’t wait any longer is what he say to me. We sat at the table and I told him not the way it was, but the way I wanted it to be. And then I watched him write a letter for Maddie. He gave that letter to me to make sure she got it, and he went off and didn’t come back for a long time, some twenty years.”

“Did you have a letter for him?” Elizabeth asked. “Did she give you a letter for him when she left for England?”

Curiosity closed her eyes briefly and then nodded. “I didn’t give that over neither. If I had done what they ask me to do, most likely she would have come back. It was me kept them apart, may God forgive me my pride. And you know why I did that? Lily?”

“Because you thought you knew better,” Lily said. There were tears on her cheeks now. “You thought you knew what was right, and you were so sure you made that decision for her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Curiosity said. “In my pride and vanity I thought I knew better than your grandmama. I tole myself that Gabriel Oak couldn’t be trusted to take care of her and a child too. Him with that itch to always be off moving. I was bitter about her going off, though I didn’t see that right then. And so I tampered where I had no business, no matter how much I loved Maddie. I had no business. I have prayed every day that the Good Lord might take mercy on me for my wickedness. When the letter come from England saying you was safely come into this world, Elizabeth, there was a note for me too.”

She reached into her apron pocket and brought it out. A single piece of paper, yellow with age. Elizabeth took it when Curiosity held it out to her, and after a moment she opened it. She read aloud:

If thou shouldst ever see Gabriel again, please tell him that I bear him no ill will. He gave me a beautiful daughter and I am content
.

“Right then I knew what a terrible thing I had done. I had to tell Maddie, but I kept putting it off. I thought if I could find Gabriel first and confess to him, he’d go to England and claim Maddie and his child.
I wrote to him, I did. Whenever I could get together enough money I sent off another letter, to all the places he talked about. Wrote on
it, for Friend Gabriel Oak, Artist Originally of Baltimore, Should He Pass Through
. I did that right until the judge went off to England hisself to bring Maddie home. Then I waited all those months until he came back, every day telling myself that when she was back, when I could look her in the eye, I would confess it all.

“But she didn’t come back and I never had word from Gabriel either, not until he come through Paradise some twenty years later, when Maddie was long in her grave, may the Good Lord rest her soul.

“I can see the question you afraid to ask on your face, Elizabeth. So let me just finish this sorry story and say yes, I did tell him then. I tolt him what I had done and I tolt him he had a daughter, born and raised in England in the belief that the judge was her daddy.

“I tole him all that and he just sat quiet, the way he had. Thoughtful. I wished he would shout at me but no, he just sat and thought for a long while. And then he ask, real calm, what was it did I want from him? As if he owed me something. As if I thought I deserved his forgiveness. I was going to say that, but then something else come into my mind. Something I could ask for, not for me, but for you, Elizabeth. I ask him for a picture of his own face, a portrait. So that I could send it to you one day and say, this is your daddy. Your mama loved him very much.

“And he say, yes, he would see to it that you got to see his likeness one day.”

“Oh,” Lily said. Tears trailed over her face but she made no attempt to wipe them away. “That day he asked me to draw him. You were there, Curiosity.”

“Yes, I was. I held him to that promise.”

Birdie sat up straight. “Is that the picture hanging in your room, Ma? Of the man with the—” she used her hands to describe the broad-rimmed hat Gabriel Oak had worn.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Lily gave me that drawing as a gift. I look at it every day.”

“That’s the story I been holding back all these years. I expect I’ll have to tell it again when I stand before God, and I won’t have no excuses because it was wrong, what I did. I will tell him what I’m telling you now, Elizabeth. I am heartily sorry.”

“I can see that,” Elizabeth said. “I can see that you are. But Curiosity, the penance you have inflicted on yourself has been too extreme. All these years of self-recrimination and guilt—”

“I was guilty,” Curiosity said.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “If you need to hear me say it, then yes. It was a mistake, and you should not have done it.”

Birdie came over and leaned against Elizabeth with all her slight weight, as she had done as a very little girl when she was uncertain and in fear of losing her balance. In a voice that was swollen with the tears she was trying to hold back, she said, “I don’t want you to be mad at Curiosity.”

Elizabeth put her arm around her youngest daughter’s waist. “I know,” she said. “But you must understand that the anger and sadness will pass with time. What will not pass are the feelings of love and affection and gratitude I feel for Curiosity. She has been the truest friend, as much a mother to me as my own.”

Curiosity had closed her eyes. The muscle fluttering in her cheek was the only proof that she had heard what Elizabeth was trying to tell her. Then she seemed to force herself into action. From her apron pocket Curiosity drew out two letters. Her hand was shaking when she held them out to Elizabeth. They were brittle with age, and neither of them had ever been opened.

“Many times I imagined this, of what it would be like to give these to you. All these years I been thinking on it. I never read them; you can see the seals ain’t never been broke. So now I am going to go back to my own place and set a while, leave you three to talk among yourselves. When you are ready to talk to me, Elizabeth, I will abide by whatever it is you want me to do.”

“But I know that already,” Elizabeth said. “I want you to stay here. Right here with us, where you belong.”

There was a small silence. Then Curiosity took a deep breath and let it go slowly. “So,” she said. “That teapot has gone and emptied itself again. I’ll be right back.”

She left the room without a backward glance, and Birdie would have started after her had Elizabeth not held her where she was.

“Leave her for now,” Elizabeth said. “Leave her a few minutes. She’ll come back to us. Wait and see.”

A
t Lake in the Clouds the party had already started when the walkers came into the clearing. The others greeted their arrival with shouts and laughter, everyone so happy to see one another and determined to have a good time that Martha was immediately drawn in, all her doubts gone just that easily.

Hannah took her by the hand and introduced her to the people she didn’t know—Susanna, Blue-Jay’s wife of a year; Susanna’s brother John, who had come up from Paradise earlier in the day; a young Mohawk brother and sister called Jumping-Bird and Little-Tree who were visiting from Good Pasture in Canada, and a few others whose names escaped her as soon as she had heard them.

Though the new dark limited what she could see, Martha had the sense that very little had changed at Lake in the Clouds. The house and the cabin stood no more than a minute’s walk apart, each with a clutch of outbuildings and a scattering of trees. The long mountain glen led to the waterfall and the lake that gave this place its name. Cornfields at the other extreme, and beyond them cliffs and a steep drop.

In the clearing between the house where Daniel had been raised up and the lake, a great bonfire was burning, putting out heat that Martha felt standing at the edge of its light. Another, smaller fire had been set farther away, where a boy of ten or twelve was turning a calf on a spit. He was in deep conversation with Annie, who was pouring something over the meat, liquid that spattered into the fire and sent up clouds of fragrant smoke. The smell came on the breeze and again Martha’s stomach cramped in protest.

Annie caught sight of her and smiled. Martha raised a hand in greeting. She had last seen Annie on the day of the flood and she was surprised and a little ashamed to realize she had not thought much about her at all, though they were of an age and had been friendly as girls. And here she was, the new bride opening her doors to a crowd of people and showing a confidence and ease Martha had to both wonder at and admire. She might have been doing exactly the same thing in a very different setting, but that seemed more like an odd dream now, something apart from her real self.

On the last leg of the walk Ethan had explained to her how things were ordered at Lake in the Clouds, to spare her the need to ask embarrassing questions. Annie and Gabriel lived in the cabin nearest the cornfields, the one where Runs-from-Bears and Many-Doves had raised their family. They shared their home with friends and cousins who came to visit from Good Pasture in Canada or even farther. Blue-Jay and Susanna were in the house nearer the falls, where Daniel’s parents had lived until they moved into the village. Runs-from-Bears stayed with them there. Martha was curious about Susanna and would have liked to talk to her, but that would have to wait. There was food to get ready—a great deal of food—all to be put out on two long plank tables set upwind of the bonfire.

The women unpacked baskets and called out to one another, telling stories as they put out platters and bowls, shooed the hounds away, and laughed for the simple pleasure of it.

There were three different kinds of bread, apple butter and honey and dried berries stewed to a jam, a side of smoked bacon cut into thick slabs, bowls of beans, pickled tomatoes and cabbage, the sharp smell of cider vinegar and dill bringing Martha’s appetite up to a roar. Jennet put a plate of gingerbread on the table and then rapped her husband’s knuckles when he reached for a piece.

“As bad as the bairns,” she told him, and he laughed.

Martha took part in a half dozen conversations, answered questions, and asked some of her own, though she had to raise her voice to be heard. It was very noisy with the sound of the waterfall and the fires and so many people with so much to say to one another in English and French and Mohawk.

When Gabriel brought the first great platter of roast meat to the table, steaming and fragrant, people filled their plates and settled down to the business of eating.

There had been no sign of Daniel, but Martha thought he would show himself now. He must, she told herself, and planned how she would greet him, how friendly her tone should be without giving away—what? What really was there to hide, anymore? People seemed to have decided for her, and she could fight against that or ignore it. Try to ignore it.

“Friend Martha?”

She looked up from her food, suddenly aware that Susanna’s brother was talking to her. John, she recalled. He had read law and these days he ran the mercantile for his father. A sturdily built man of some twenty-five years, as fair as his sister with his hair tied back into a neat queue and as thoughtful and quietly observant as an owl. Martha was surprised to hear his voice at all. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“I asked thee, could I please have the water?”

As she picked up the pitcher Martha realized it was empty. It was a chance to get away and calm herself before she did something truly awful, and so she got up from the bench and announced she was going to fill it.

As soon as she walked out of the light of the bonfire Martha realized how cold the evening had grown, and she wished for her shawl. To go back for it now seemed silly, and so she drew the cold air as deep into her lungs as she could and held it there for a moment. A trick she had learned as a girl, and it still seemed to work.

At the edge of the lake a variety of water buckets stood on a low stand. There was a rope tethered to a stake in the ground and a bucket at the end of it, so she could lower it into the water, and a winch to haul it back up again.

A misting from the waterfall fell light as silk on her face as she went down on one knee, folding her skirts carefully. Then she leaned over the mossy flat rocks and plunged the jug directly into the water.