Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 125

Hannah was listening closely. At one point she looked up from her basket of herbs with a confused expression. "How can a frog be papist?"
""Frog" is a disrespectful term for the French," Elizabeth explained. "Most of France is Catholic."
Curiosity made her own disrespectful sound. "I don' know why it is folks are always stirrin' things up. Always lookin' for a way to get bloody."
Hannah pursed her mouth thoughtfully. "It's not much different from home."
"True enough. We got enough trouble of our own, don't need to go lookin' for any fresh foolery."
But she met Elizabeth's eye when she said this, and there was a ghost of a smile there, a kind of weary acceptance. She got up, and spread her skirt smooth with her hands. "I'm tired," she announced. "And I cain't deny, that bed looks mighty sweet. I'll wish you all a good rest."
But even with the twins settled and Curiosity and Hannah in the next room, Elizabeth did not have Nathaniel's full attention. And how could she, when he finally lowered himself into hot water laced with soap? And so she took a turn at the window, her own attention divided between Nathaniel and the scene below in the square. Thomas Paine, or what was left of him, twirled at the end of a rope while boys pelted him with rocks and dung.
"Dumfries doesn't suit you, Boots."
She laughed. "Did you think it might?"
Nathaniel slid down deeper into the tub in a futile attempt to submerge his shoulders and knees at the same time. "I can't figure out if it's Scotland or that crowd in the square that has you out of sorts."
"Both," she said, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. "And I am worried about this outing of yours."
He met her gaze directly. "If you don't want me to go, you'd best just say so."
Elizabeth considered. She could ask him to stay, and in such terms that he would give up this scheme of a nighttime ride to an unfamiliar tavern frequented by rough trade. But then she would have accomplished very little: her own poor mood exchanged for his sleeplessness, and this she could not justify to herself.
Nathaniel bent his head to pour a dipper of water over his soapy hair. The twilight was deepening now, and it gilded the wet skin at the back of his neck. A neck like any other. He was blood and bone; he was strong, and clever, and quick. He would go out into this curious Scottish dusk, a sky streaked the color of gilded roses and ash and ocher, and when he had done what he must do, he would find his way back to her again. She must trust him, as he had once trusted her to undertake a perilous journey.
She said, "They will light the bonfire soon, and that will be a great distraction. I suppose that will be the best time for you to go."
He blinked the water out of his eyes. "That's not what I asked you, Boots."
"I know what you asked me." She came to kneel beside the copper tub and take the dipper from him. While she rinsed his hair she said, "Last night you said something to me, I cannot quite get it out of my mind. You said you might as well be in chains for all the good you are to me."
He started to speak, and she hushed him.
"I will not have you in chains, not even of my own making. But promise me you'll be careful, and that you'll be back by dawn."
Nathaniel caught her wrist and pressed his mouth to her palm, his beard stubble rough against her skin. "I promise. Maybe I'll scratch at your window like the Green Man, come dawn."
"More likely you will come to wake me with cold feet," she said, surprised and disquieted by the shudder that ran up her spine. Come dawn, come dusk. Superstition, she reminded herself. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The bonfire came to life against the darkening sky with a roar that drowned out the crowd. Nathaniel watched from the lane beside the King's Arms while he planned his route to the livery through the mass of people, young and old, faces shining with excitement and their voices hoarse with liquor. Mr. Thornburn capered around the fire with the rest of them, and Nathaniel wondered if he had any idea how much Dumfries looked like any Kahnyen'kehâka village after a battle well fought.
He pulled his preacher's hat down over his brow and skirted the edge of the open area, staying out of the fire's light. And here he found there was another Dumfries, one that watched silently from the shadows.
Just beyond the tiled roofs of the inn and the red-sandstone assembly hall was a sea of small cottages. On every one of those thatched roofs, a man or boy sat perched with a bucket between his knees and a broom soaking, at the ready, wary eyes following sparks up into the deepening night sky. In doorways mothers stood with babies on their hips and silent husbands at their backs. An old man with cropped gray hair, hard faced and remote, sat straight spined on a mule and the fire reflected red in his eyes. In the near dark he put Nathaniel in mind of Sky-Wound-Round, his first wife's grandfather, the man who had first led him into battle. Homesickness rose in him, but he put it away.
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead ...
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips
that I revived, and was an emperor.
Nathaniel looked back over the square and saw a single candle flame at the window. Elizabeth was watching still, the pale heart shape of her face floating in the dusk. She was waiting for him already, though he was hardly gone.
There was a light in the livery, and the ringing of hammer on metal. He went in, a sack of thick five-guinea pieces in his fist. The Tory gold had been nothing but trouble since Chingachgook brought it out of the bush almost forty years ago, but now he would put it to good use.