Fire Along the Sky
Page 7

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, answering the question he hadn't asked. “But put your breechclout on first. You too, Annie, you can't go greet people in such a state.”
To Lily she said, “That will slow them down a little, at least. Come along, maybe we can get there first.”
Without any discussion Many-Doves began to gather the hoes together.
“But there's six hours of sun left,” Lily said as her mother moved off. She found herself as uneasy about the strangers as she had been eager to see them just a moment ago.
Many-Doves laughed and poked her shoulder with two fingers. “As if you could work now with your brother just come home.”
All of the riders had dismounted but for one, a smaller figure—a lady by her bearing, Lily saw now. One of the men had a hand on the woman's saddle, his head canted up to talk to her—argue with her, Lily corrected herself, taking in the way he held himself—and in that moment she recognized him.
“Luke,” she said.
Her brother Luke, come from Montreal without word or warning, and in time of war. Lily felt the shock of it in the tips of her fingers, shock and joy and a flash of fear.
Lily's mother had recognized him too, and picked up her skirts and her pace both. Gabriel and Annie streaked past, heels flashing.
“Who is that lady?” Lily asked out loud.
Many-Doves made an approving sound deep in her throat. “Maybe your brother has finally brought a wife home with him.”
“They argue as though they were married,” Lily agreed.
Luke turned away from the stranger and pulled his hat from his head in frustration. The lady turned her horse away and started up the path that led to Uncle Todd's place while Luke watched her, his fists at his sides.
Richard Todd was the most prominent man in Paradise, the richest in both land and money, and a trained medical doctor. His fine two-story house was the only brick building in a village of squared-log cabins. It had been the largest house until the Widow Kuick bought the mill and built her own fine house, but the Kuick place had fallen into disrepair these last years and sat hunched on the hillside overlooking the village, like a frowsy old woman without the wits to look after herself.
Richard Todd was rarely at home and the Kuick widows rarely stepped out of doors, but when Richard went off to Johnstown or Albany, his place in the world and the things he called his own—house, gardens, pastures, cornfields, barns and outbuildings, books and animals and plowshares—were cared for. A small kingdom beautifully kept, and the doctor had spent less than three weeks in residence in the last six months.
It was a situation that suited his housekeeper very well. At seventy-nine Curiosity Freeman still ran things, overseeing the house servants—her own granddaughters—and the farm workers like a benevolent general presiding over well-trained and adoring troops.
Together Curiosity and Elizabeth and Many-Doves looked after the medical needs of the village; they dosed children for worms, set broken bones, delivered babies, laid out the dead and comforted the living. Sometimes Curiosity went for days without giving the absent doctor a thought.
They were in the laboratory, the farthest of the outbuildings on the Todd property. Once this had been the heart of Richard's medical practice, and it had surprised Hannah to find that while she was gone it had been given over to a different kind of research. According to Curiosity, Joshua Hench had been conducting experiments with metals and blackpowder explosives, all with Richard's approval.
“Wouldn't do no good to tell you,” Curiosity said in response to Hannah's questions. Her irritation was sharp and clear on her face. “You just have to wait and see for yourself. Unless you was wanting the laboratory for your own work?” She looked at Hannah hopefully. “Then Joshua will just have to clear out, go blow himself up someplace else where I don't got to hear it happen.”
Hannah didn't want the laboratory; she hadn't come home to practice medicine, after all, and she said so.
“You've expressed your concerns to Richard, I take it.”
At that Curiosity just snorted. “You wave a firecracker under a man's nose, he ain't going to pay no attention, no matter what kind of sense you be talking.” Then she pushed out a sigh. “Ain't nothing to be done, but it do set my teeth on edge.”
Hannah was relieved if Curiosity was willing to abandon the subject. She turned her attention to the stack of Richard's daybooks on the standing desk. Ledger after ledger in which he had logged his daily work: treatments, patients seen, raw materials ordered from Albany and New-York City and beyond, experiments he had undertaken and the results they had produced. All neat, well ordered and full of Richard's dry observations.
June 4 1808. Set right tibula on the youngest Ratz boy. Subject healthy if dull-witted ten-year-old; clean break; no tearing to the muscle or ligaments; prognosis good if he can be kept out of trees.
Curiosity had come along to keep Hannah company while she read. She sat near the door in the light from the single window, snapping beans in a bowl in her lap.
“Richard has been away a long time,” Hannah noted; the last entry in the daybook was six months old.
“Wouldn't care if he never did come home,” Curiosity said, her temper flaring again. “If it weren't for missing Ethan. I wish he'd leave the boy here with me. He won't ever make no doctor and everybody know it. Richard best of all.”
“Ethan is hardly a boy anymore,” Hannah pointed out. “He's nineteen.”