Fire Along the Sky
Page 97

The room had begun to shift and quake like a ship in high winds, voices rising. O'Brien's face flushed a good deep shade of red and he pounded with his fist on the table so his papers jumped.
“Quiet! Quiet! Quiet, or I'll have the lot of you put out, I swear it!”
From the back of the room Missy Parker called, “Mr. O'Brien, don't cut her off just when she gets going!”
O'Brien began to sputter, but Jemima cut him off with a wave of her hand. “If you'll just hold your trap long enough, I'll tell you what you want to know.”
“I'll hold you in contempt, missus, if you dare speak to me like that again.”
Jemima laughed out loud. “You do that, if you like. Won't matter much to me if I hang a few days sooner. Now do you want to hear this story or not?”
It took another ten minutes of negotiations between O'Brien, Jed McGarrity, and the crowd before Jemima was allowed to go on. By that time Elizabeth found that she was perspiring so heavily out of dread and unease that her handkerchief was already damp through. Nathaniel sent her a sharp and questioning look, which she ignored.
“So then,” Jemima said, almost primly. She turned her head to catch the constable's gaze. “Jed, you'd best see Nicholas out before he pukes on his shoes.”
“I'm not going anywhere,” said Nicholas Wilde.
Jemima shrugged. “Be it on your head.”
“I'll remind you once more, Mrs. Wilde,” Baldy O'Brien said in his most imperious tones. “I run this hearing, not you.”
“Aren't you so high-and-mighty, Baldy O'Brien, and need I remind you how I paid my taxes last time you came knocking on my door?”
This time it took fifteen minutes until the room was settled enough for Jemima to go on. O'Brien's complexion was flushed bright with indignation and, Elizabeth noted to herself, guilt.
Nathaniel leaned over and whispered, “I got a feeling she might be bringing Lily's name into this,” he said. “If she does, you sit tight and let me handle it.”
Elizabeth was so taken aback at this suggestion that for a moment she sat staring at her husband.
“I won't shoot her,” he said, as if to assure her. “At least, not right here and now.”
“. . . you think you know everything,” Jemima was saying. “About poor Nicholas Wilde. What a good husband he was to his sick wife, what a fine father. How he mourned his Dolly. Fools, all of you. It was Lily Bonner he was mourning all the winter, and if you doubt me, look at his face, he's gone the color of paste.”
“You bitch.” Nicholas strained forward.
“Call me what you like,” Jemima said. “I've been called worse.”
“Lily Bonner went to Montreal,” said Charlie LeBlanc, standing up suddenly. He pointed at the drawings that still hung on the walls. “To be a painter.”
“She went to Montreal before the truth came out and her reputation was ruined once and for all,” Jemima shot back. And: “Why are you looking at her father? Do you think he'd admit the truth about one of his own?”
They were looking, Elizabeth could not deny that, but more out of confusion than curiosity. Nathaniel met everybody's eye with his usual calm, almost weary now, as if Jemima were a ranting toddler who must eventually scream herself into a trembling quiet.
At the table where he was recording the proceedings, Ethan took the opportunity to trim his quill, and Elizabeth wished she had even a tenth of his calm spirit.
Jed McGarrity cleared his throat. “Get on with it, Mima. Even if that's true—and I ain't saying it is—it don't have anything to do with Cookie.”
“But it does,” Jemima said. She straightened her shoulders. “If you're smart enough to hear what I'm saying. So there was Claes Wilde, taking care of his imbecile of a wife and pining for Lily Bonner. Then Dolly did him a favor and died, and Cookie disappeared. Now who profited from that, I ask you, but Nicholas himself?”
Anna McGarrity called out. “If things are the way you say, Jemima, why didn't he send for Lily to come back from Canada?”
“Oh, he would have,” Jemima agreed. “Except that letter came from her brother, the one saying she had gone and got married.”
The noise in the room was such that Elizabeth couldn't hear Jennet and Curiosity, who had their heads bent together to talk. O'Brien was on his feet, pounding on the table, and even Jed's deep voice made no difference; the crowd must have its say. Then Nicholas stood up and turned, his eyes moving through the crowd until they settled on Nathaniel.
He said, “She lied to me about Lily being married. I didn't find out the truth until we got back from Johnstown.”
“Of course I lied,” Jemima said. “Your precious Lily was gone away and I was here, with a girl of my own to raise and never knowing if I'd be able to feed her the next day or the day after that. I needed a man to support us and put food on the table. I did what needed doing, and you never complained when you were lying on top of me, now did you?”
Zeke and Levi were big men and strong, but it took a lot for them to hold Nicholas Wilde back.
Jed said, “I don't want to take you out of here, Claes, but I will if you don't settle down.”
Jemima went on, her voice cold and hard now. “I would be cooking your supper this minute if whoever killed Cookie hadn't done such a piss-poor job of it. Now hang me if it will make you feel better about yourselves. That would suit Nicholas just fine too. It would save him the trouble of divorcing me so he can court Lily Bonner in the open instead of sneaking around barns in the dark of night.”