Fire Along the Sky
Page 110

“Do you want me to take a message to your daughter?”
Jemima looked at her then, a look so blankly hostile that a knot of fear rose up from Hannah's gut to lodge in her throat.
“I had a daughter once,” Jemima said. “But she's dead to me. All I've got now is this child I'm carrying and a husband who doesn't want me.”
“And a roof over your head,” Hannah said. “And a full belly. You've thrown everything else away, but maybe you can hold on to that much.”
On the porch she stood for a moment with Nicholas. There were things to say, but she couldn't think, just for this moment, where to begin, or how; all she could see before her was her sister Lily as a young girl, running down the orchard on a summer day, her wild hair trailing behind her like a banner and the air full of her laughter. How she loved this place.
“I wanted to say—” he began.
“Wait,” Hannah said. “You've got a bump on your head the size of a turkey egg. A snow compress will help a bit. If she starts to run a fever, you must come fetch me.”
Snow had begun to fall in gentle waves of large, wet flakes, and Hannah turned her face up to the sky, glad of the clean cold air on her skin.
Nicholas said, “Two things I want to say. First, thank you for the kindnesses you've shown my Callie. She's better off with you just now. Nobody should have to live like this.”
He swallowed hard, his voice catching. Hannah waited, her gaze focused on the orchard.
“The other thing is, I never touched Jemima. Not once. It's what she wants, but I won't be pushed to that. She did fall down the steps, but it wasn't my doing.”
“Good,” Hannah said, picking up her bag. She hesitated, and looked at him over her shoulder. “You could leave here,” she said. “Take your daughter and start new somewhere else.”
She saw the color spread up his neck, the fury and embarrassment and sorrow at work in the clenching of his jaw. He said, “I can't leave my orchard.”
“Is that it?” Hannah asked. “Is that really what you can't leave?”
He said, “The child she's carrying is mine. I won't pretend otherwise.”
For that much at least Hannah must respect this man, who had caused himself and others so much pain. “And Lily?” Hannah asked, although she had meant to keep her thoughts to herself. “What of Lily?”
He blinked at her. “Lily is lost to me,” he said. “I know that.”
“Good,” Hannah said again, and left him there on his porch.
It was Elizabeth's experience that the middle of winter was the time when she was most likely to make real progress with her students, especially when the cold was deep and dry and unforgiving, as it was now. Even the most difficult of her charges—boys who hated anything that kept them indoors—would settle, twitching but resigned, with their primers and slates, glad of the hearth a little too large for this small cabin.
Of course, there was a price to be paid. In the good heat, with shutters and doors closed tight, it became clear, as it did every year, that many of Elizabeth's students would not bathe until ice-out. Some, it seemed, were sewn into their underclothes, a custom Elizabeth had heard about but could never quite explain to herself; the mechanics of it baffled and revolted her in equal measures. The end result was, the schoolhouse stank and would continue to stink, every day a little worse.
She thought idly of the new schoolhouse she was to build, and the possibility of a closet where students might wash, stocked with soap and towels and a tin hip bath. They would laugh her out of the village, of course, but she had been laughed at before. If she was to have a schoolhouse built—if she was to be compelled to do such a thing by Richard Todd, of all people—she would see it done to her own vision, exactly.
With some effort Elizabeth forced her attention back to her youngest students, who were in the middle of a recitation of the times tables. Maggie Cameron was mumbling and studying her shoes; later, Elizabeth would have to take her aside and see what was keeping Maggie from her studies. Leo Hench belched softly and the smell of pickled cabbage wafted through the little room.
Elizabeth pressed her handkerchief to her face, both to blunt the smell and to hide her grimace. There was no other way to cope with the thick miasma of wet wool permeated with body sweat, among other things.
Every year she set herself the task of solving the problem of the winter stink, as the children called it, and every year she failed. It had become a joke in the village. Her schoolboys, frontier raised and not easily offended, wagered on the day she could no longer keep her handkerchief in her sleeve. This year it had come out much earlier than usual.
“Teacher,” called out Jem Ratz from the last bench that he shared with his two younger brothers. “Can we have a turn near the hearth next?”
If Elizabeth really were to give up teaching—something she was not sure that she wanted to do, just yet—it might well be the Ratz boys behind that decision. But the three of them were the youngest of their tribe and with any luck, she consoled herself, they would be the last.
Jem was looking at her with that particular blank stare of his that was meant to hide some new scheme coming laboriously to life behind dun-brown eyes. At almost thirteen Jem Ratz was as big as most full-grown men, broad of hulking shoulder, with a heavy, square head topped by a spiking of blond hair. A rash of pimples covered his forehead and cheeks and bracketed a full mouth filled with a jumble of strong white teeth.