The Endless Forest
Page 142

Of all the hens, her favorites were the three oldest, glossy black, called Missy and Ma’am and Mimi. Curiosity talked to them as though they were her sisters, and they seemed to talk right back.
“We won’t hurt them,” Adam said. “We’ll just take them … for a walk.”
“We’ll scare the eggs right out of them,” Henry said, but in a resigned voice. Anybody could see that they had already settled on this plan.
Birdie was more than satisfied. When they let the hens out, there would be a lot of squawking and screeching while grown-ups and students chased them back and forth. If things went well, Birdie thought, they could take bets on how long people would go on searching for the number two chicken that didn’t exist at all.
With the plan mostly in place, the girls went back to Curiosity’s kitchen to help with dinner, but the boys stood in a semicircle giving one another sharp looks. Birdie knew those looks too well.
“What?” Birdie said. “Tell me.”
“If we hurry,” Adam whispered, “we could go to the beaver dams and be back in time for dinner.”
It was one of those times when she knew exactly what she was supposed to do: Remind these three that they had been forbidden to go to the far end of the lake because of the flood damage. She was the aunt, and she was the oldest, and for the last few days she had thought about little else but doing just what the boys were suggesting.
She cast a glance at the house, and made herself a promise. She would count to ten, and if no grown-up showed themselves in the meantime, they would go.
“What’s she doing?” Nathan whispered, and Henry hushed him with an upraised hand.
She counted to fifteen for good measure.
“Maybe we should tell somebody,” Adam suggested.
“No,” Birdie shook her head. “It will be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Let’s go.”
They only got as far as the Johnstown road, where a small crowd had stopped in front of the Red Dog. The Focht’s big carriage stood right in front with all four horses hitched up and ready to go. The servants were busy strapping luggage to the roof.
“They’re leaving?” Birdie said to no one in particular. “Just like that? Going away?”
“Just the mister and missus,” Pete LeBlanc answered.
“The boy stays here,” said Missy O’Brien, sniffing her disapproval. “With two servants. Those blacks there, I don’t know their names.”
“Lorena and Harper,” said Henry.
“But why won’t Jemima take Nicholas?” Nathan asked.
“Business,” said Missy, her small mouth pursing. “That’s the claim. Though if I was a betting woman, which I am not, I would wager my good right arm that they won’t come back at all.” Missy said this as though the idea met with her approval. She was always one to anticipate other people’s misfortune.
Pete’s wife, Georgia, was working herself into a temper as well. “They’ll just leave the boy here with Callie. That’s what Jemima does; she dumps her burdens off here and goes on about amusing herself.”
Henry said, “You had best not be talking about our aunt like that.” Henry had a temper, though it didn’t often come to the surface.
“She wasn’t talking about Callie,” Pete said, pulling his wife away. “And don’t you tell anybody otherwise. We got enough trouble without getting on the wrong side of your granddaddy.”
Georgia looked like she wanted to argue the point, but just then Jemima and Mr. Focht came out of the inn. Jemima didn’t look at anybody at all; she just went to the carriage and went up the stairs, holding up her skirts with one hand and taking a servant’s arm in the other.
“Off for a ride, Mima?” called Jed MacGarrity in his warbling old man’s voice. He had arrested Jemima once, according to the stories, and so maybe it wasn’t a surprise that she ignored him.
When Jemima had settled in the carriage with her husband beside her Birdie said, “I wonder if Martha knows.”
“Oh, she knows,” said Missy O’Brien from the back of the crowd. “Jemima and her number three there—Focht, is that his name? A strange name if you ask me—they come down from the mountain not a half hour ago. I don’t think they were picking wildflowers. Look, they’re about to go.”
One of the servants climbed up into the carriage while two others mounted postillion.
Just then Nicholas appeared with a woman on the threshold of the Red Dog. Harper was just behind him, and neither boy seemed especially worried or concerned. Birdie decided that she needed to get to know Harper. She had seen him out walking almost every day since he arrived, all over the village and the mountain too. That last memory gave her a twinge; she hadn’t said anything to her da, and she was supposed to. They all kept an eye on anybody who wandered around Hidden Wolf.
But then again it was just a boy who liked to wander, and who had too much free time. There probably wasn’t much work for one servant, let alone for the four that Jemima had brought with her.
“Maybe that was his wet nurse,” said somebody nearby. “Maybe he won’t care about Jemima being gone as long as he’s got her.”
Henry said, “That’s Lorena. She’s his favorite.”
To Birdie the woman looked kind. She had a small but easy smile, and when she used it her teeth flashed very white. Her skin was not so black as some of the other servants; to Birdie it seemed more the color of cinnamon, rich brown tinged with red. Her face was built different from blacks Birdie knew. She had a full mouth but her nose was narrow, and her eyes weren’t exactly black or even brown.