The Endless Forest (80 page)

“You haven’t answered any of my questions, you know. Not about the Bleeding Heart and not about Nicholas either.”

“I haven’t,” Jemima said. “And I won’t.”

“It looks to me like you’re not well enough to travel,” Birdie told her. “So Nicholas won’t have to go.” She didn’t say,
because you’re dying
. Instead she said:

“You don’t have to worry about people being mean to Nicholas
because of you,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about him going without, because Callie wouldn’t let that happen and neither would Martha. And neither would my folks, because Martha and Callie belong to us now and so Nicholas is one of us. You may hate that idea, but the truth is, as long as he stays here he’ll be happy. The same is true of Martha, because she’s not going anywhere and you can’t make her do anything. It’s too late for that.”

Jemima was staring at her again, but the heat was gone from her face. There was no anger there and not even any irritation, which was usually what happened when Birdie got to talking with grown-ups this way. She just looked tired and sick.

She said, “What about Callie? Is she happy?”

“I don’t think she knows how to be happy,” Birdie said. “Maybe she never got the hang of it, even when she was little. Because her ma was sick and because everybody went off without her and left her alone. All she cared about for a long time was the orchard, but that didn’t make her happy either because the crop kept failing. Which is why I don’t think you really want the orchard, even if the Bleeding Heart does turn out as good as Callie hopes.”

“What difference would that make?” Jemima said. “She sold the orchard, to Levi Fiddler, of all people. Levi and
Lorena
—” She made a disgusted voice deep in her throat.

Birdie took a deep breath. “You don’t understand, then. You don’t understand how Callie thinks about the orchard. It don’t much matter to her if she owns it, but it does matter that something comes of it. Her father loved the orchard and she loved it for his sake. Haven’t you ever done anything for the love of it?”

For a long time Birdie thought Jemima had gone to sleep and she wouldn’t answer, but then she did. She said, “People here think they know me, but they don’t. They don’t know the first thing about me.”

“I don’t think you want people to know,” Birdie said. “I don’t think you know yourself.”

Jemima’s face twisted. She said, “What do you want of me?”

“I don’t need anything from you,” Birdie said.

“Then get out of here,” said Jemima. “And leave me alone.”

I
t seemed to Elizabeth that in extreme duress a particular mood fell over the village, a living thing with tendrils that reached everywhere and bound everyone together. It had happened during the flood, it had happened when fire burned down the Maynards’ barn, and when disease stole whole generations of children from one family or another. That same mood could turn abruptly and bring out the worst of man. The slaughter of a thousand birds for no reason but bloodlust, the push toward war. Her first year in Paradise she had seen the worst come to pass, when a few men had roused the village—much smaller then—to move against the Mohawk on Hidden Wolf.

Her father-in-law had been one of the few people who could put a stop to trouble with nothing more than a few well-placed words. Even the drunkest, most bellicose trapper had backed down when Hawkeye stood up and looked him in the eye.

Why those things should come to mind Elizabeth was not at all sure. The feeling of foreboding that followed her from home all the way
down to the village had no grounding, as far as she could tell, in any observable fact. It was impossible to imagine that the village might rise up in outrage
for
Jemima, who had no friends here. Once word was out that Martha was refusing to take Jemima in, Missy O’Brien might try to work up outrage about a child unwilling to look after a sick mother. Then again, Missy’s own husband had a complicated and unhappy history with Jemima—one that Missy would prefer to forget—and so it seemed unlikely that trouble could come from that corner. Nor could Elizabeth imagine a crowd storming the Red Dog to serve justice to a dying woman. That kind of mob needed a leader who was skilled at directing violence in a particular direction.

The situation, when she could make herself look at it dispassionately, was not very complicated. A woman they had thought gone for good, someone many people had cause to dislike or even hate, that woman had come back to Paradise to die. Why exactly she had done such a thing was a mystery that might never be solved beyond one basic and undeniable fact: She would suit herself, regardless of the trouble and pain she visited on her daughter and stepdaughter and their families.

Nothing Hannah had told them of Jemima’s demands had surprised Elizabeth, but she had learned to trust her own instincts, and she knew somehow that there was more to this story. Turning onto the Johnstown Road she realized what it was.

Not the story Hannah had told, but Hannah’s own manner when she delivered it. She had lost many patients over the years to disease and injury, old people and young. Even the most tragic cases, the ones that must break even the most stalwart of hearts, even then Hannah maintained her calm.

And now, less than an hour ago she had stood in a circle of women of her own family, and she had struggled but failed to completely hide her disquiet.

Elizabeth was irritated with herself that she had not registered this at the time, but the shock of the news about Jemima had made Elizabeth turn all her focus to Martha and Callie. She had missed the signs, but she was sure Nathaniel had not.

Once they had agreed on a course of action, everyone had scattered. Martha and Daniel left for home while Ethan and Callie and Hannah herself had gone in the other direction. Simon took Curiosity to see
Jennet and Lily, who had been alone far too long and who would need to hear the news about Jemima. Luke and Ben had gone back to the village to round up the little people, and she, determined to bring Jemima to heel, had set off to see her, alone.

As the Red Dog came into view Elizabeth realized that the news of Jemima’s arrival would have already spread through the village. This was clear to her because there was a small crowd outside the Red Dog, people who normally would not have left the lakeside until very late, when the fireworks had come and gone. Jemima was come, and there would be more rumors about where she had been and why she was back like this, without her husband. They would be trading opinions and theories fueled by ale and high spirits. Elizabeth could almost read it in their faces.

Except they weren’t looking at her, but beyond her, so that when Nathaniel’s hand settled on her shoulder she stopped and leaned back against him in relief.

“Married all these years,” he said. “And you’re still making me run after you.”

Becca came outside just then and started right for them, her arms crossed tight at her waist, as if she were in physical pain.

“Elizabeth,” she said in a low voice. “Nathaniel. I want you to know I had no idea about Jemima coming back. She never wrote to me. I didn’t even know she was here until an hour ago. It was Alice and Joan who arranged it all with her, and I hope you know they are sorry just now that they were ever brought into this world. Almost as sorry as I am for the trouble they have caused.”

Elizabeth managed a small but reassuring smile. “Becca, you have nothing to apologize for.”

“I have Alice,” Becca said, bitterly. “And I have Joan. I have took the liberty of telling Joan she won’t be coming back to work for you anymore. I’ll see to it you get somebody better deserving of your trust. I just don’t understand, after all the stories I told of Jemima as a girl, and the misery she was to me when we went into service together. How terrible she was after she tricked Isaiah into marrying her, to me and Cookie both. I said to them, I said, whatever she promised you, you can forget about. Jemima Southern never kept a promise in her life. She’s using you like she uses everybody.”

Becca drew in a breath to steady herself.

Nathaniel said, “Becca, there’s no call for you to work yourself up this way. Put Jemima out of your head.”

Becca took a darting look around herself, leaned forward, and dropped her voice even lower.

“Is it true she’s real sick?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“And that tomorrow she’s moving up to the strawberry fields so Martha can look after her?”

“No,” Nathaniel said firmly. “Unless you kick her out she’ll be staying right where she is. Curiosity and Hannah will manage nursing her between them.”

“It’s cowardly of me, but I don’t want to be the one to tell her she’s not going to Martha’s,” Becca said.

“On the contrary,” Elizabeth said. “It is proof of your native good sense.”

That got a smile from Becca.

“If you were hoping to speak to her just now, I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “After she heard the news about Lenora getting married she threw a fit, and now she’s locked her door and says she won’t see anybody before Hannah comes back to talk to her.” She bit her lower lip hard enough to break the skin. “I knew she’d be trouble. I knew I should have turned her out that first time she showed up. You could just kick down the door, Nathaniel. I wouldn’t mind one bit.”

“I think not,” Elizabeth said. “We’ll just wait for Hannah. She will be here very shortly.”

“Maybe we could get some of your cider while we’re waiting,” Nathaniel said. “This heat gives a man a thirst.”

H
annah cut across the Mayfairs’ pasture, the most direct path to the middle of the village where she was most likely to find the little people. She wished she knew where her stepmother was. Elizabeth would be the right person to take along on this errand; she was one of the few people Jemima seemed to respect, in a limited way.

Sometime between this moment and finding Nicholas she’d have to think about how to tell the boy the things he needed to know, and prepare him for his mother’s condition. She was still thinking about this when she was caught up in the crowd impatient to start dancing. They filled the open space that stretched from the trading post to the school-house, full of energy and excitement and, many of them, an excess of ale. In their middle Levi stood on a small wooden stage, his fiddle already tucked up under his chin. Next to him was Maurice Petit, a French trapper who had made a name for himself calling out dance steps in his own particular way. Over ten years he had developed a patter that added a lot of laughter to what had once been a fairly serious business of
trying to remember complex steps. Some claimed that they couldn’t dance anymore unless Maurice was there telling them which way to go, bouncing up and down on his toes like a puppet on a string.

People were calling out suggestions, and Levi was nodding and smiling. It always went this way; Levi held a cupped hand to his ear and made a serious face while people shouted up at him. Then he played what he wanted to play. While Hannah watched, Levi and Maurice launched into “Sweet Peas,” and the crowd hollered its appreciation. Even over that noise Maurice could be heard, and in fact the children called him Moose Maurice for the way he bellowed.

In his heavy French accent he shouted out the moves—three-hand swing, cage the bird, ladies’ ring—pausing now and then to bellow at somebody who was a beat behind or, more often, a young woman who knew how to move. He would break into rhymes he seemed to come up with spontaneously, because Hannah had never heard him repeat one.

Another time she would have been here dancing with Ben, and enjoying herself mightily. Now Hannah made a circle around the dance, but there was no sign of the little people. She had turned toward the road down to the lake when she saw them coming toward her at a trot, each and every face grim and worried. Evidence enough that news of Jemima’s arrival had already reached them. The boys walked in almost military formation, with Nicholas in their middle.