Fire Along the Sky
Page 154

The spring takes a hard toll on the prisoners. This week three men died of smallpox, two of brain fever, two of pneumonia, another three of their wounds, one when he was crushed by logs while on work detail, and one drowned while trying to escape. In the garrison hospital they have had more deaths still, most from smallpox and typhoid.
Of these twelve prisoners who died, the men have been most affected by the death of a young soldier. In all his time here he never roused himself to tell his name, and so he goes to an unmarked grave. I think of his poor family, and mourn for them.
Jennet writes her own letters, but I will say here what a good help she is to me, both as a surgeon's assistant and as a friend. I do not know how I should manage without her. The prisoners and the soldiers all love her for her kindness, for her good humor, and most of all, I think, for her stories. Luke is less pleased with her for she still refuses to travel on to Montreal. I understand his concern but I would be loath to lose her companionship.
From Luke you will have the rest of the news you must be waiting for.
Your loving daughter
Hannah, also called Walks-Ahead by the Kahnyen'kehàka, her mother's people, and Walking-Woman by her husband's. Written in her own hand the fifteenth day of March 1813.
Dear Father and Stepmother,
I would like to write to you that my brother and cousin will be home in a few weeks' time, but in good conscience I cannot give you false hope. Hannah and Runs-from-Bears agree that he is not strong enough to travel, and may not be for another month or more. You will see that it would be foolish to try anything before he has regained his health. I wish I had better news to share, but I will remind you that Daniel is improving, and for the moment at least is out of harm's way.
There is another matter I need to bring to your attention. I hope that my father might have some knowledge of a man who is now resident at the Nut Island garrison, and is in daily contact with Jennet. I have some suspicions about this person that I have not yet been able to either prove or dismiss on the basis of information available to me. My grandmother has suggested that my father may know more—though she will not say exactly why she believes this—and so I will describe the man here.
He calls himself Father O'Neill, a Catholic priest, and he calls himself an Irishman though he does not speak with the accent. He is a man close to fifty years old, strongly built, six and a half feet tall, graying black hair, blue eyes. His reputation is as a fighting priest. He roams from company to company hearing confessions, saying mass, and joining in skirmishes with great relish. Somehow Jennet gave this priest the idea that she was a Protestant, but open to conversion. She claims in her letters to me that while she is listening to his sermons she is also convincing him to see that the prisoners get the things they need. There is no harm in it, she says, and I am not to worry.
Except for this: my grandmother, who knows of every priest who has ever set foot in Canada, knows nothing of this man. In fact no one had ever heard of him before the start of this newest war, nor is there any record of his arrival. He appeared out of thin air, and I suspect he is up to no good.
I asked Runs-from-Bears to watch this man as well as he might from the followers' camp, and from him I have a little more information. The priest is missing the lobe of his left ear, a fact that is usually hidden by his hair, which he wears loose. He walks like a woodsman, and when Runs-from-Bears gave an owl's hunting cry in the middle of the day, he looked up suddenly and with suspicion, as would any man who had lived for a longer time in the great forests.
For obvious reasons, I cannot go to Nut Island. Neither can Hannah leave, and Jennet will not. I am uneasy at the bone about this man's real intentions; I pursue this matter in whatever way I can. Of course should there be any trouble Runs-from-Bears will see to it that Hannah and Jennet are brought to safety, and that fact alone allows me to pursue this matter less aggressively than I might otherwise.
If indeed you know anything of this man, the courier will wait for an answer from you before he leaves Paradise.
Your loving son
Luke
Chapter 31
“Now I seen some mighty messes in my time,” said Curiosity, shutting the kitchen door behind her with a thump. “But I don't think I ever seen the likes of us.”
The dozen people who had braved the storm for Richard Todd's burial—the last of three—stood in their best clothes, dripping icy water and mud onto Curiosity's scrubbed floor.
Elizabeth's plans for Dolly Wilde and Cookie Freeman had fallen nicely into place, but on the way from the meetinghouse graveyard to the Todds', the storm had come down on them. The best laid plans, Abe had observed, and Nathaniel finished the verse for him in the Scots he had learned from his mother: must gae agley.
All Elizabeth's careful plans had to be abandoned. Instead of readings and speeches and the singing of hymns, there had been a rushed prayer before they broke and ran for cover.
Only Black Abe, Nathaniel, and Simon had stayed behind to fill in the grave. Nicholas Wilde, who had come to all three gravesides alone—to Elizabeth's relief and disquiet both—had disappeared as quietly as he had come.
There was a strange humming energy in the room. It was the storm, Elizabeth told herself, and the morning's work, and the fact that everyone had been watching to see if Jemima would come to make trouble. Callie and Martha stood trembling and stunned, but Annie and Gabriel were barely able to sit still.
“You look like you jumped into the rain barrel,” Annie said to Gabriel, almost in admiration. “And then rolled around in the dirt.”