The Endless Forest (74 page)

“You know what I mean. If there’s something wrong I could help.”

Curiosity’s expression softened. “Your folks just trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“Maybe nothing,” Curiosity said.

“Jemima,” Birdie said. “I know it’s Jemima everybody is whispering about. Can’t you just tell me that much?”

“Of course it’s Jemima,” Curiosity said. “She’s that bad penny you always hear folks talking about. I can tell you this much—”

Birdie sat up straighter.

“It ain’t none of my business, and none of yours either.”

When Curiosity got a certain look in her eye, it was best to leave things be. Birdie got up and went to find her mother.

Nathaniel Bonner pushed back from the breakfast table late on the morning of the Fourth of July and ran a handkerchief over his damp brow. Elizabeth glanced at him from the newspaper she was reading, revealing ink marks on either side of the bridge of her nose.

She said, “You’re grinning. I take it I have ink on my face?” And she held out her hand for his handkerchief.

“I’m guessing you got a headache if you’re pinching the bridge of your nose.”

“A little one. I’ll ask Hannah for one of her powders.”

He leaned over and kissed her on the brow. “Boots, it’s time you admitted you need spectacles for reading.”

Over the years she had seen at least a dozen people fitted for spectacles—at her own expense too—but now she avoided doing the same for herself.

“An occupational hazard.” Whether she meant the ink or the need for spectacles wasn’t clear, and she clearly had no intention of pursuing the subject. Instead she reached back to a basket of clean laundry and hooked a fresh handkerchief out for him.

He said, “I’m on my way down to the village to see how they’re getting along with the fire pits. I’m hoping there won’t be any fistfights tonight.”

“Now that’s a fib,” Elizabeth said. “You look forward to the ruckus all year.”

It was true that he looked forward to the Fourth of July celebration. The food was good and plentiful, there were contests and games and dancing. In the evening, Joshua Hench would set up his twice-a-year fireworks display.

“You saying you don’t like the Fourth?”

“I love the Fourth,” Elizabeth said. “And you know it. I just wish it weren’t so very hot. I keep thinking of the July I was eight months gone with Robbie, when I thought I would suffocate in that heat.”

She sometimes talked of the children they had lost so early, and in such warm tones that anyone who didn’t know her would think she had
got past the pain. The fact that the lost ones were on her mind meant that she was more worried about Jennet and Lily than she could even admit to herself. To Nathaniel it seemed that all the women were on edge these last few days, and he wondered, fleetingly, if there was something amiss they had decided to keep among themselves. If he asked her straight out she would tell him, but then again he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Instead he said, “Why don’t you come down with me? I’m guessing the little people will have all kinds of mischief going, and I know folks will be asking after you. Curiosity will have some harsh words for me if I leave you here.”

“It just seems unfair that Hannah should have to stay behind.”

“Hannah,” he reminded her, “is a doctor, and if she thinks she needs to stay with Jennet and Lily, that’s up to her.”

He watched her turn the idea over in her mind. She said, “I could send one of the children up to check on them now and then.”

“Exactly,” Nathaniel said. “Fetch your sunbonnet, Boots, and let’s get going.”

In the deep shade of the parlor Hannah stood at the window and watched her father and stepmother start out for the party in the village.

“He did it,” she said. “I didn’t think he would, this year. But she’s going.”

“Well, good,” Lily said. “Good for Da.”

Hannah sat down in the rocker Simon had fitted with a system of ropes and pulleys. She put one foot on a small board that pivoted as she rocked, and in response a thin rectangle of perforated wood hung overhead began to swing back and forth, sending a current of cool air through the room.

“Och,” Jennet said, putting her face up to catch the breeze. “Don’t stop.”

“I think Simon could sell these contraptions from Florida to Quebec,” Hannah said.

Lily stretched and yawned. “He is clever, my good husband. Is it possible that I need another nap?”

“Take it while you can get it,” Hannah said.

It was a luxury to have husbands and parents and children elsewhere,
so that they could rest in each other’s company. Even the LeBlanc girls had the day off, so that there was no one to overhear them and carry tales to the village. To Hannah it was worth a hundred firework displays.

For a long time they talked on and off, each of them slipping away into sleep for a few minutes, half rousing, falling back into slumber. When the baby roused from his nap Hannah fetched him to the parlor and nursed him in the pleasant breeze from the fan, and then they passed him around and entertained him until the heat made him sleepy again. Hannah took him back to the infant cot that had a permanent place in her stepmother’s kitchen and saw him settled.

Then she put together a tray and they sat around it in the parlor—Lily still on her divan, Hannah and Jennet on chairs—eating boiled eggs with salt and butter and new bread. There was a jug of water she had retrieved from the springhouse, and cold mint tea.

“In the village they’re eating pork cut off the spit,” said Jennet. “But the very thought makes my stomach turn.” She ran a hand over the great swell of her belly.

“That’s the heat,” Hannah said. “And a child ready to come into the world.”

“It could hardly be more impatient than I am,” said Jennet. She closed her eyes and without opening them she said, “What does it mean, do you think, that I’m so much more tired this time than the last, with the girls?”

“No doubt it’s a boy,” said Hannah. “Already set on mischief.”

“And for Lily?” Jennet asked. “Another boy?”

“Oh, a girl,” said Lily. “Ma won’t have it any other way, though she wouldn’t admit it. I hope she’s right, though if it’s to be my one and only—well, it seems that Simon should have a son to carry on the family name.”

“Listen to her,” Jennet said. “Have ye been keeping count of the Ballentynes at Carryck? Simon’s brithers have been putting out sons one after the other. Like rabbits. And beyond that, why should you not have a daughter to carry on your mither’s line? Is that no just as important?”

“She’s right,” Hannah said. “And beyond that, I don’t see why this should be your one and only. You may have one a year for the next ten years, now that you’ve got the hang of it.”

They laughed for a while, but then Lily’s expression sobered. She said, “I am starting to wonder if the doctor I saw in Rome might have been right about my problem.”

“The wee mannie who said you had to choose between art and childbearing?” Jennet snorted.

“No, that’s not what he said, not exactly.” Lily sat up a little straighter. “He said that if I insisted on painting I wouldn’t be able to carry a child to term. Since Italy I’ve only used charcoal and pencil and ink, no paints of any kind because I didn’t want the smell in Ma’s parlor. It’s probably just a coincidence.” But the look she sent Hannah’s way said she didn’t believe this herself.

“There are herbals and medicines enough that interfere with a healthy pregnancy,” Hannah said. “Dittany. Black cohosh. Vervain and rue. There might be something in paint.”

Lily’s expression was pained. “Do you really think—”

“It could be,” Hannah said.

Lily’s high color faded a little. “I may have to write and tell him he was right,” she said. “If all goes well in the end.”

“No need,” said Jennet. “The idea that he might have been wrong would never occur to him.”

“Well then,” Lily said slowly. “If I seem so healthy to you, and there’s no sign of trouble—do you think I might be able to … walk around, at least a bit? A few minutes every day?”

“We’ll put the question to Curiosity and your ma this evening,” Hannah said. “You’ll have to win them over.”

Lily collapsed back and blew out a breath so that the curls at her temples jumped. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

Jennet sat up straighter to look out the window. “Who is that coming? One of the LeBlanc girls, but which one?”

Hannah stood up to see. “Alice.”

“Alice LeBlanc?” Lily’s tone was half amusement, half doubt.

“It is odd,” Hannah said.

“Och,” Jennet said. “Is she the one who’s so angry that Martha got Daniel?”

“She is,” Hannah said. “Good thing Martha isn’t here. I’ll go see what Sour Apples wants.”

Alice was the prettiest of the LeBlanc girls, but she had earned her unflattering nickname. When Hannah’s daughters asked her why Alice was called Sour Apples, Hannah had reminded them of one of Elizabeth’s
sayings:
Pretty is as pretty does
. There were many such expressions Elizabeth had brought over with her from England; this was one that made sense to Hannah.

It was one of the mysteries of life, how children born and raised in the same family could turn out so different from each other and from both parents too. Becca was one of the kindest and most generous women Hannah knew, but she was also very gruff. Alice had only got the gruff. The six LeBlanc girls were a mix that always took her by surprise, like coming across a white cat with a litter of kittens every color of the rainbow, from black to ginger to calico. It made sense to Hannah that Alice had it hard, the first girl after six boys, but why she held on to that resentment though it did her only harm, that was unclear.

Now Alice was coming on at a good clip, her frown focused on the ground at her feet. Then she caught sight of Hannah on the porch and her expression shifted from preoccupation to worry.

She called out, “I’ve been looking for you all over.”

Hannah owed Alice LeBlanc no explanations, and so she cut right to the heart of the matter.

“Somebody hurt?”

Alice took a moment to catch her breath. “No,” she said. “Sick. A lady in one of our rooms, she’s been vomiting since last night.”

“Is she in pain?”

“Belly cramps,” Alice said.

Something was off about this, but Hannah couldn’t put a finger on it. She said, “Good of you to come up here with word.”

Alice’s mouth turned down at the corner and she looked more herself. “Everybody else is at the games, and Ma’s busy in the kitchen. It was me or nobody. If you don’t care to come—”

“I’ll be there,” Hannah said coolly. “Start straight down and I’ll follow you in ten minutes.”

The truth was, she didn’t mind being called out. Things had been very quiet in Paradise since the flood. Sore ears, a few broken bones easily set, two deliveries, fever teas. She considered the ailments that might account for the symptoms that Alice described, which was most likely nothing more than indigestion that camomile tea could put right.

Jennet dismissed her reservations about leaving them with a wave of the hand. “I can get to the kitchen when Simon wakes, and I imagine Elizabeth will be back soon, anyway. We’re fine, aren’t we, Lily?”

“More than,” Lily said, yawning. “There’s no reason to worry about us.”

Hannah had her bag with her—she always did, these days—and so it was just a matter of tying a kerchief over her hair and washing her hands. Then she dashed down the hillside on a deer path that would take her to the Red Dog by the back way. It was a sensible precaution, because if any of the little people caught sight of her it would be next to impossible to resist their pleas that she come watch the foot races or bob for apples or buy them sweets. Just now she didn’t have the time, but if this visit didn’t take too long she could spend an hour with them.

She had just come around the corner to the back of the Red Dog when somebody caught her by the elbow and swung her around and up against a wall.

“What—”

Ben pinned her by the wrist held over her head, and he kissed her. He was good at it too, and always had been. Even when she was disinclined or distracted, Ben could bring her back into the here and now like this. He kissed her so expertly that she felt the tug of it in her womb.

When he pulled away she said, “How good to see you too,” and he laughed and kissed her once more, this time running his hand up her leg to cradle her buttock.

“Ben!”

“Hmmm?”

“Anybody could come around that corner.”

“I don’t mind an audience.”

She put her free palm on his chin and made him look her in the eye.

“You wouldn’t mind Baldy O’Brien grading your performance?”

He went very still, and then he pulled away. “There’s the school-house,” he said, wiggling one eyebrow.

Hannah closed her eyes briefly. “I know I’ve been neglecting you—”

“Hush. I’m as much at fault as you are.”

It was true that they went to bed exhausted and fell asleep before they could even think about the things they were missing, but that was the price of bringing children into the world. The irony was, the thing they both wanted to do here, in broad daylight, would give them release, but the possible result nine months down the road would only compound the problem.

Hannah counted the days in her head as Ben did his best to win her
over to his way of seeing things, and when she had calculated as best she could, she pulled away again.

“Here’s what we can do,” she said. “Tomorrow morning we can leave the house at first light. I’ll make noises about going to see the patient upstairs—” She gestured with her chin to the upper floor of the Red Dog. “And we’ll meet at the pond.”

Oh, when he smiled like that. She’d be thinking about it all day.

Alice said, “That was more than ten minutes.”

“Was it?” Hannah would not let Alice get the best of her, and so she only smiled. “If you’ll take me to the patient—”

Huffing like a newborn with colic, Alice led Hannah through the empty public room and up the stairs. In Paradise folks took the Fourth of July seriously and nobody wanted to miss any part of it, not even the men who spent every free hour cradling a tankard of Becca’s ale. And still Hannah had the strong sense that something was not as it seemed.