Into the Wilderness
Page 257

"Hannah?" she asked, grasping at Falling—Day's arms.
Falling—Day, her face like a mask: "But I sent her back home to you, hours ago."
Elizabeth gasped. "Her book?"
In the pale light of the moon, Many-Doves ' face alive with fear.
"It was left behind in the schoolhouse."
Chapter 56
There is nothing to fear in the dark, Hannah's great—grandfather had always told her. Only O'seronni fear what is not there. She had spent all her life on this mountain; her Kahnyen’keháka half was not afraid. Her other half, the white half, could be silenced for the moment. This errand would not take long, and she would be back in her own bed with the book under her pillow.
Hannah felt again for the key in her pocket. She had taken it from its nail near the door, and without asking. Tomorrow she would have to answer for that. Grandmother would be very angry with her; she didn't dare think about what her father would have to say.
Elizabeth might be angry, too, but she would understand, in the end. It was the first book Hannah had ever owned, her very own. And they had not seen what she had seen: Jemima Southern's eyes round with envy, and wanting. Jemima didn't care about bones of the hand or the flow of blood, but she wanted anything Hannah had, and the Southern farmstead was closest to the school. Hannah wanted to get her anatomy before it could disappear.
In the moonlight, the schoolhouse echoed with remembered voices, dark and quiet as a fallow field. Her hands trembled as she lit a candle.
She found it in the study, on the desk. Someone—Jemima?—had opened it to an illustration of a chest in which the bone had been cut away and the muscles and ribs peeled back neatly to show the heart. Hannah had seen more than her share of blood: both of her grandmothers were healers, and neither of them had ever had the habit of sending curious little girls away. But these pictures had nothing in common with broken bones and gashes and trap wounds. Hannah had planned to grab the book up, lock the door, and speed away home to her bed, but she paused to run her finger over the drawing.
It was lovely and quiet here. The little room with its neat rows of books was hers, for the moment. Hers, and nobody else's.
Hannah pulled the door firmly closed. A shawl was draped over the chair; it was thick and warm, and it had Elizabeth's scent. She pulled it around her shoulders against the chill. The desk was too high for her to sit over the book comfortably, so Hannah sat cross—legged on the rag rug with her feet tucked under. Bent over the book in her lap, she lost herself in the secrets of the human heart.
In time she turned the page, and then, after a while, the next. The candle burned steadily while she read, but she had no sense of time passing. When the print began to swim, she rubbed her eyes and forced them to focus.
Hannah fell asleep with her cheek against a drawing of the arteries of the neck. She did not wake when the candle sputtered and went out; she never heard the sound of the door opening in the other room.
* * *
Liam cantered through the village, filling the air with his cawing: "Fire! Fire! Fire at the schoolhouse!" Men began pouring out of Axel's tavern before he had even started away up Hidden Wolf.
Billy Kirby, thought Julian as the village erupted into action. With his shattered mouth and pride to match, there was no doubt about who had taken the torch to the schoolhouse. The idiot would go to gaol for this, but worse, the village would stand behind the Bonners, now.
Julian had no intention of sharing credit with Billy Kirby for a crime he hadn't even contemplated—arson was not his style, so inelegant—so he took the bucket that was shoved into his arms and ran with the others for the schoolhouse. There was nothing like a fire to sober men up.
* * *
If a man had time to stop and admire it from a safe distance, a building burning in the night was a beautiful thing. The flames were well established on the west end of the schoolhouse: they shot upward from an open window, a strange reversed lightning intent on laying the heavens open. At the front of the building, window glass glittered like hungry yellow eyes. Julian was reminded of a leopard he had seen once in a cage in a London whorehouse, pacing, pacing.
People were pouring in from every direction. Women, barefooted and in night dresses with babies in their arms. Children shivering in the cold. Men, many of them still in the clothes they had worn to the school recital in the evening. There was no movement toward a bucket line: it was out of control, and one splash of lake water at a time would be no use at all.
The judge came galloping up, his white hair unbound and fluttering. He flung himself from the saddle and stood before Julian, heaving for breath. With one hand he held the reins of the terrified horse and with the other he grabbed his son's shoulder and dug in his fingers, hard.
"I hope to the Almighty God that you had nothing to do with this, Julian."
A sudden bellowing saved him a long and tedious explanation. O'Brien, coming out of the woods, was shouting and pointing toward the fire.
"The Mohawk girl!" he roared, waving his hat. "Saw her go in a couple of hours ago, don't know if she came out.
"Lord Almighty," the judge groaned. "Are you sure?"
"There was candlelight on the east end, an hour ago."
"Which Mohawk girl?" Julian asked. And getting no answer, he grabbed O'Brien by the collar and swung him around forcibly. "Which Mohawk girl?"
The old man squinted up at him. There was ash in his white hair.
"Does it matter?" he asked, jerking away. "Wake up, man. She's cooked, whoever she is."