The Endless Forest (5 page)

When her mood dipped low, she would think of Teddy’s face when he told her that they couldn’t marry. How he had studied his shoes, and
how that cowardly act shocked her as much as what he had to say. Making a list of his flaws could occupy her for a little while at least.

After breakfast they gathered their things and waited on the porch until the carts and oxen were in place and they could set off for home. Martha liked sitting out in the chill air. It made all the colors brighter, and the sun on her face was welcome.

Jennet’s girls fussed with dolls and talked without pause. Lily had taken out a sketchbook, and Elizabeth was reading a newspaper. Martha wished she had something to do; even knitting, something she had always disliked.

How strange the world is, she might have said to Elizabeth. Right at this moment I should be on a ship, a new bride on my way to spend six months touring Europe with Teddy. But in a moment everything changed.

She had the urge to simply walk away, walk all the way back to Manhattan and the house on Whitehall Street. To the room that had been hers for so long, with its pretty draperies and wallpaper and the thick carpet on the floor. If she had to hide in her misery and shame, why not there? At first she had simply refused when this move was suggested to her, and then Mrs. Broos had cut her on Fifth Avenue. It wasn’t until that point she realized how bad things really were.

She wondered what Amanda had done with her wedding gown. Most likely it was still hanging in the dressing room, a cloud of pale green silk wrapped in tissue. Now Martha understood why the matrons clucked over the new fashion of having a dress made for the wedding day alone. What a terrible waste.

A horse and carriage crawled past. The mud sucked at hooves and wheels and made the driver mutter to himself. And then Simon Ballentyne was there. Martha knew he had come before she turned around, because she had seen Lily’s face and the way her expression softened.

Simon stood at the foot of the porch stairs, spattered with mud from head to toe. He was a tall, sturdy sort with a shock of thick dark hair as coarse as a bear’s pelt, and a heavy beard shadow.

Lily stood, her sketchbook forgotten.

“No joy?”

“Not yet,” Simon said. “The others are searching on the far side of the commons.” He leaned on the rail with one hand while he worked a
mud-caked boot off with the other. When he had it free he turned it over and a stone fell out.

“Stop fussing with your boot,” Lily said, “and tell us.”

He grinned at her. Martha didn’t find Simon particularly attractive, but out in the open with his hair tousled by the wind there was something about him, something vital and alive. And his dimples flashed when he smiled, so that it was almost impossible not to smile back.

“There’s naught to tell. Between the crowd and the mud and all there’s small chance of finding two lads who don’t care to be found. It may be best to wait until the business is done.” He jerked his head in the direction of the fields behind the house. “They’ll come back on their own when the crowd begins to shift.”

Lily looked up toward the heavens and groaned. “I knew it; I knew there would be another delay.”

“This is very bad,” Elizabeth said. “Young boys should not be exposed to such things. But if it is as crowded as you say, perhaps they won’t see anything at all.”

Mariah looked up from her dolls, surprised.

“What is it, Mariah? Did you want to say something?”

The little girls exchanged a glance, and then Isabel spoke up. “Grandma, they won’t be standing anywhere. They’ll climb a tree and watch from there.”

Elizabeth’s mouth fell open and then snapped shut. “Of course. We should have thought of that. Why didn’t you say anything, girls?”

Mariah and Isabel shrugged in harmony. “You didn’t ask.”

Simon started to put the muddy boot back on, but Elizabeth held up a hand to stop him.

“I’ll go,” she said. “There’s no time to spare.”

She thanked foresight for her own sturdy boots as she followed the crowds, people on an outing as though they were going to a fair, and expected to be well amused.

Where she could, Elizabeth ducked around larger groups—mothers and fathers and children, some still in arms. Then the field opened before them and she could see the gallows. The executioner stood, waiting patiently. So the prisoner hadn’t yet arrived; she had time to find her grandsons and get them away.

There was little hope of meeting the rest of her party in such a
throng, and so Elizabeth headed directly for the closest stand of trees. It was less crowded here, as this spot would give no view of the proceedings at all—unless you were sitting up high on a branch strong enough to hold two boys.

Elizabeth put her head back to look into the tangle of evergreen branches, squinting to sharpen her gaze—her eyesight was getting worse; she really should have made the time in Manhattan to see about spectacles—when many hundreds of people began to shout and cheer with such enthusiasm that she couldn’t help but turn around.

The crowd made way for a cart drawn by a mule. On the flat bed was a rough coffin of raw wood, and on the coffin stood a man, his hands tied before him. He wore only breeches and a linen shirt open at the throat, a carefully laundered shirt that set off tanned skin and dark hair that fell down around his shoulders and lifted in the breeze. If he was cold there was no sign of it.

She could make out shouts from the crowd:
Murray! Murray! Murray! We’ll miss you, Jim Boy. Jimmy Murray!

The prisoner bowed gracefully from the shoulders, right and then left. He raised his bound hands in an awkward salute and the crowd responded with good cheer.

Elizabeth shook herself out of her preoccupation and turned back to the trees. She put her hands around her mouth and shouted up into the branches.

“Nathan Bonner! Adam Bonner!”

But it was no use, she couldn’t be heard above the crowd. She couldn’t even be sure that the boys were anywhere near. She hurried on, calling as she went.

On the gallows the mayor of Johnstown was reading from a piece of paper, his head thrown back and his arms extended to accommodate his shortsightedness.

“James Murray of Schenectady. You were charged with the roadside robbery and murder of Mr. Horace Johnson, tax collector—”

The crowd had a lot to say about Horace Johnson, and for a while their voices were louder than the mayor’s. It seemed that many were thankful to Jimmy Murray for relieving them of Mr. Johnson’s company.

Elizabeth worked her way from tree to tree, shouting the boys’ names up into the dark and fragrant tangle of evergreen branches.

“And so!” bellowed the mayor. “You have been indicted, tried, and found guilty. The court has sentenced you to death by hanging. Do you have anything to say?”

Murray did indeed have something to say. Elizabeth hoped he would entertain the crowd for a good long while, as she hurried from tree to tree.

“He was a right bastard,” Murray shouted, and the crowd agreed with him at length.

Elizabeth slipped between trees too young to support the weight of two boys and almost ran into someone she never expected to see here.

“Annie,” she said. “What—”

But she could see what, and why, and understood that they had all been sent on a fool’s errand. Nathan and Adam wouldn’t be found anywhere nearby; most likely they were still someplace in Mrs. Kummer’s barn. It had all been Gabriel’s doing, and Annie’s.

Her youngest son came out into the open without being called, his expression carefully neutral. Twenty years old, the tallest of all the Bonner men, taller even than his father by a few inches. The most stubborn of all the children, which was saying quite a lot. Nothing of embarrassment or regret nor even a trace of remorse.

“What exactly is it that you were planning?” She heard the tremor in her voice but could do nothing to stop it.

“We were married not an hour ago,” Gabriel said. “By the dominie at the Dutch Reformed church.”

Elizabeth drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, Gabriel.”

“You
eloped,” Gabriel said.

“The circumstances were very different,” Elizabeth said. A conversation they had had many times, and were about to have again while behind them a hanging ran its course.

“You and Da wanted to get married and your father disapproved,” Gabriel said. “Seems pretty much the same to me.”

“But I didn’t object to you getting married,” Elizabeth said, her voice rising and cracking. “All I was asking—”

“You ask too much, Ma,” Gabriel said.

Elizabeth tried to gather her thoughts. She turned to look at the girl. The youngest daughter of Many-Doves and Runs-from-Bears, a child she had helped deliver. On her deathbed Many-Doves had asked
Elizabeth to look out for this daughter’s welfare, and Elizabeth had sworn to do her best. What she had never imagined was that her own son would get in the way.

“Annie. This is what you wanted?”

The girl raised her head. She was so much like Many-Doves that the sight of her always gave Elizabeth a jolt, joy and sorrow intertwined.

“Hen’en.” Yes. “I
left the school.”

“Of your own free will?”

Gabriel began to protest and Elizabeth shot him her sternest glance. He scowled, but stepped back.

“Annie.
Kenenstatsi.”
Elizabeth switched to Kahnyen’kehàka, because it was the language the two used when they talked together. It was a language she spoke imperfectly, but she needed every advantage at her disposal.

“You must say what it is you want. It is your choice. Not Gabriel’s, not mine. It is not too late.”

A flash of anger lit up Annie’s face. She said, “Aunt, I know who I am. I am Kenenstatsi of the Kahnyen’kehàka Wolf clan. I am the daughter of Many-Doves and the granddaughter of Falling-Day. I am the great-granddaughter of Made-of-Bones who was clan mother of the Wolf for five hundred moons. I am the great-great-granddaughter of Hawk-Woman, who killed an O’seronni chief with her own hands and fed his heart to her sons in the Hunger Moon, in the time when we were still many, and strong.”

Her voice never faltered, but she paused, as if to gather her thoughts. Gabriel stood behind Annie, his posture stiff and his jaw set hard.

“Gabriel wrote to me and asked me to meet him here. I listened for my mother’s voice, and in my dreams I ask my grandmothers to guide me. I am a daughter of the Wolf Longhouse, and it is my right to choose a husband.”

All the tension left Gabriel’s shoulders. The expression on his face was so full of emotion that Elizabeth felt it was an invasion of his privacy even to look at him.

To Annie she said, “My son is very fortunate to have won your favor.”

Annie closed her eyes very briefly and then she smiled. For the first time in this very difficult discussion, she smiled. There was nothing of nervousness or agitation in her smile, but a kind of quiet calm that soothed some of Elizabeth’s doubts.

In the field beyond them the noise of the crowd rose and then fell off suddenly. In the still they could hear the creak of the swinging rope.

Gabriel would follow in his father’s and his grandfather’s footsteps, and make his living hunting and trapping in the Kahnyen’kehàka tradition. He would never dream about leaving Hidden Wolf, as long as he had Annie with him. In his single-mindedness he was so much like his father at this age.

“I am sorry about the school, and the money you paid to send me there,” Annie said. “But it wasn’t the right place for me.”

“I wanted you to be sure,” Elizabeth said. “I thought you might like teaching.”

“She’s not you, Ma.” Gabriel’s temper, so easily aroused, flared up.

“And that is my misfortune.” Annie shot back at him. “Do you show your mother disrespect on the very day you take a wife?”

The girl walked away and Gabriel watched her go, a stunned expression on his face. Then he ran to catch up to her. Elizabeth watched them both, and wondered how much she was to blame for this turn of events, and if at forty or fifty her youngest son would look back on this day and still find fault with her.

O
n the mountain called Hidden Wolf the streams boil up, ready to breach their banks
.

The ground is still frozen solid; a shovel wouldn’t get far, and neither does the rain. The earth cannot soak up anything at all, and so the water begins to move, dragged down and down by its own weight, pulling debris from the forest floor along for the ride: branches, rocks, a whole hawthorn bush trailing its roots like a hundred knotty legs. The rain fills the burrows where small things tend their young. The water flushes out the deepest fox holes, and rouses a young bear from hibernation. From deep in the forest a moose bellows its irritation, but the sound disappears into the swelling water
.

The water moves, and everything must move with it
.