Fire Along the Sky
Page 57

Elizabeth glanced at the still form folded into a blanket at the shadowy end of the common room, and then she sat down again and took up her sewing, smoothing the linen that would serve as Dolly's shroud with the palm of her hand.
She had just finished the last seam when the door opened and Hannah and Jennet came in, shuddering snow with every step and laughing like schoolgirls. They stopped where they were when they saw the work in Elizabeth's hands.
“Who?” asked Hannah.
“None of us,” said Elizabeth quickly. “Dolly Smythe. Dolly Wilde, I should say.”
The girls exchanged a look that told Elizabeth the worst of it: no one knew that she was missing; and therefore, no one knew that she was dead.
“You mean to say that no one is looking for her?” Many-Doves asked. It was a question already asked and answered, but even Many-Doves, the very soul of calm, was shaken.
“There was no alarm raised while we were in the village,” Hannah said. “Before the storm or after. And no word from the Wildes that anything was amiss, not since Missy Parker has been going up to help with the widow. In fact, I've seen no sign of them for a week, at least.”
“Blessed Mary.” Jennet's breathing hitched once and then again. “The poor wee thing.”
“This is very disturbing,” Elizabeth said again. “But there is nothing to be done except wait for your father to come home and explain. Hopefully he will bring Nicholas and Cookie with him.”
They were standing around the trestle table with their heads bowed in the glow of candle and firelight. On the table was Dolly Wilde's body, not so much a human form but a poorly made wax effigy.
Hannah said, “It does sound as though she had a brain fever, from what you've told me. But I'd have to do an autopsy to be sure.”
Elizabeth's face contorted in horror even as Hannah was speaking. Her mouth opened and then closed with a sharp sound.
“Don't worry,” Hannah said. “I have no intention of cutting her open. I haven't attended an autopsy in years, and I don't have the right instruments.”
Or any at all, she might have said. Once she had carried a full set of surgeon's tools with her wherever she went, beautifully crafted blades and probes that had been a gift from a teacher she had not heard from in years. Now she borrowed Richard's things when she could not do without.
“I see no evidence of violence done,” Hannah finished. “The cuts on her hands and face are mostly from pushing her way through brambles, I think. She must have lost her gloves or never had any; you see that all her fingers were badly frostbitten.”
Jennet had leaned in very close to study Dolly's hands, which were covered with cuts and scratches, some long healed and others still bright red. “She kept cats,” Jennet said, and smoothed a gentle hand over Dolly's hair. “A gentle-hearted woman, then.”
“She was, yes,” Elizabeth agreed, and the sorrow she had been keeping at bay for so long welled up fiercely.
“And she said nothing while she lived?” It was more a statement than a question, but Elizabeth answered anyway.
“No. She was convulsing for much of the time.”
“Then what of the inquiry?” Jennet asked. “When will it be?”
“Inquiry?” Hannah said, as if she had never heard the word before.
Jennet shot her a look that was surprise and irritation both. “Why, of course,” she said. “Someone is responsible for this. Justice must be done.”
Elizabeth wondered if she had seemed so superior and condescending when she first came here as a young woman, just Jennet's age and just as sure of the proper ordering of the world. By the look on Many-Doves' face, she thought she must have been.
She said, “Here on the frontier justice wears a very different face. As does compassion.”
“Compassion?” Jennet almost sputtered the word, and hot color shot into her cheeks. “Are you suggesting that they sent her out into the cold to die? Purposely? But that's, that's—”
“Barbaric,” Hannah supplied evenly. “You want to say it would be barbaric.”
“Well, yes.” Jennet drew up a little, less certain of herself now. She glanced uneasily at Many-Doves, who returned her gaze without blinking. More softly she said, “Do you think they might really have done such a thing? I know that she was a burden to them, but—”
“No one has suggested that her people turned her out,” said Elizabeth. “And to speculate is only to invite trouble.”
“Then there must be an inquiry, and I will attend it,” Jennet said, more calmly now.
“Certainly,” Elizabeth said wearily. “No one would try to keep you away.” She wiped the perspiration from her forehead and pressed her handkerchief to her nose, inhaling lavender water deeply. Outside Runs-from-Bears had begun to cut firewood and it seemed to Elizabeth that she felt each fall of the axe echoed in her own pulse.
Just then the faint sound of the village bell came to them through the clear winter air, and each of them turned toward the door. The sound of the axe had stopped; Runs-from-Bears would be counting, as each of the women counted to herself. Five tolls of the bell for a missing child.
A missing child.
Before any of them could think what to say, the chiming started up again. This time the bell tolled four times, then another four, then—Elizabeth would have thought she was imagining it if it weren't for the faces of the other women around her—three tolls and three again.