Fire Along the Sky
Page 12

Her cousin's face had set in its planes and curves, with faint creases on the brow and at the corners of her eyes. A line of blackfly bites arched across the high crest of her cheekbone like a new tattoo, and below that other scars shimmered faintly where furrows had been dug into the soft flesh and healed. She wore a small doeskin bag on a string around her neck, one that she fingered when she was lost in her thoughts as she was now.
She has lost more than I ever imagined having, Jennet reminded herself, and came to sit across from Hannah on the single chair at the table.
“Look,” she said, drawing a chain out of her bodice. “I've worn it since the day you left Carryck. My mother thought it was unladylike to wear a bear's tooth next to my heart, but Ewan did not seem to mind.”
Hannah said, “I'm glad you still have it.” She looked away briefly. “I lost mine, some time ago.”
Jennet hesitated. “Will you tell me about it?”
Hannah blinked at her. “I think I will,” she said finally, and she managed a small smile. “Sometime I think I will. If you will talk to me about Luke.”
“That's a promise then,” said Jennet. “But let me ask you this: will you listen to what I have to say with an open mind, Hannah Bonner?”
Hannah had believed herself incapable of being surprised, but then she had not reckoned with Jennet, who reached into a pocket tied around her waist and took out a deck of cards wrapped in a rosary.
“This is called a tarot deck. It was given to me by a friend; I think someday you may well meet her.” She unwrapped the rosary and laid it on the table very gently. “The beads are for my mother, to quiet her scolding.” From the top of the deck she took a single card and turned it face up.
“This is the card I want to tell you about. It's called Fuerza in the Spanish tongue, that means ‘strength' in English. You see that Fuerza is a woman in her full power. She holds a lion's mouth open with her bare hands.” She looked Hannah directly in the eye. “This is what you may find hard to believe. The first time I saw this card I felt the bear's tooth growing warm against my skin.” She paused and looked at Hannah very closely. “Shall I go on?”
Hannah was overcome by a rush of feelings she could not immediately sort out: unease and curiosity were foremost among them, but just beneath the surface there was a flickering of anger she could not explain.
“I'm listening.”
“Very well. As soon as I arrived in Canada—as soon as Luke stopped his ranting long enough to answer a question—I asked for news of you, as I'd had no word or letter for more than a year. Luke told me what he knew, and that you were on the road home, and why.
“Well, of course I wanted to leave Montreal and come here straightaway but your brother would not hear of it. Every day there was news of another skirmish on the border, and he would not risk my neck, nor his own. But I could not stop thinking about you walking so far to get home to Paradise, and so every morning I laid out three cards thinking of you.”
She paused. “Twice in a row Fuerza showed herself to me, but always in reverse, you see, like this. Now the lion has gained the advantage over the woman. On the third morning when I sat down I was almost afraid to turn the cards.”
“If you are going to tell me that the woman was there again, I will have to ask you if you bothered to shuffle the cards.” Hannah said this with a gentle smile, but Jennet was not to be distracted. She shook her head very firmly.
“I shuffled the cards,” she said. “And I wish I could say Fuerza had shown herself again, but it was something very different. It's called the tower. Hannah, you may believe what you like, but when I saw the tower my heart leapt in my breast and I could draw no breath. It's a fearsome card, and it had never before showed itself to me since I began with this deck of my own. So I went straight to your brother and said that I must come here to see you, should I have to walk the whole way alone, and barefoot.”
“I take it he gave in?”
“Not at first,” Jennet said. “We argued for a long while. Then Granny Iona spoke up for me.” Jennet's smile was so quick and overwhelming that Hannah found herself smiling in response.
“And I ask you, what mortal man can stand up to a runaway nun? Others may stand aside when the mighty Luke Bonner strides down the lane with his men trotting along behind, but not his granny Iona. To all his arguments she only flicked her fingers. I'll tell you this, Hannah. It may be more than fifty years ago that Iona wore the veil, but she still has much of the nun about her when she's in a temper.
“And so Luke gave in, bit by bit, and we came to an agreement.” She cleared her throat, and color rose on her cheeks as she let out an awkward little laugh. Her hands closed over the deck of cards in her lap thoughtfully.
Jennet had eyes the same green as Daniel's, rich and startling as new maple leaves, but the expression in them just now was solemn. Hannah was taken with the urge to stop her, but when she opened her mouth no sound came out.
“He believes—as you may believe, cousin—that the tarot cards are naught but bits of paper that tell me what I want to hear. I wanted to come to Paradise and so they told me I must. In the end we made a wager, Luke and I, witnessed by Granny Iona and Simon Ballentyne.”
“Luke wants you to go home to Scotland,” Hannah said.
“Aye. Should my worries prove unfounded, I promised to go home to Carryck without further argument and not to come back until the war is done.”