The Endless Forest
Page 207

“Warm?”
She nodded. “Getting there.”
The rain was coming down so hard that the glass in the two window-panes rattled, and yet the first flash of lightning took Martha by surprise, so that she jumped in place. Daniel brushed his hands off and came to stand with her.
They leaned against the rough brick, shoulder to shoulder as the storm shook the world around them. It was then that Martha realized that the anxiety she had been fighting all day had gone. Somehow in the dash for shelter and warmth she had lost the tightness in her chest and throat. For the moment, at least, she could think about the hearing without breaking into a sweat.
“It would be nice,” she said aloud.
“To stay here like this?” Daniel inclined his head. “Until we got hungry.” And, after a moment: “We could sleep for a few minutes, if you like. Until the worst of the storm passes.”
It sounded like a wonderful idea, a half hour’s sleep in the soft warmth smelling of sweet hay and charcoal. And then it seemed that sleep was not possible, because a question forced its way into the clean stall where they made a nest for themselves.
“What if Jemima has done something even worse than we imagine?”
He heard her. She felt the question being taken in and then turned over in his mind but he wouldn’t answer until he had thought it through, which was another thing to appreciate about him, though it did make her pulse pick up a beat.
“I don’t care what she’s done,” he said finally. “It can’t change the way I feel about you.”
It wasn’t the question she had asked, but it was a good answer anyway.
Daniel turned a little so he could see her face in the half light. “I don’t think you understand it yet, Martha, so let me say it once more, as clear as I can. You bore the burden of your mother as a girl, and you bore it alone. But you’re a woman, and you’re not alone. Just the same way we’ll stand together at the hearing this afternoon and face whatever comes. You and me and my whole family at our backs. No matter what she has to say, no matter how bad, none of that matters. I know you’re afraid and you’ve got reason to be afraid, but sometime or another you’re going to have to trust me.”
“But I do. I do trust you.”
“No you don’t,” he said. “Not down deep. Not where you’ve got all that history with your mother bundled up and tied with a knot. You can’t let it go for fear of the damage it’ll do, so you keep it to yourself.”
“How do you know?” Martha said. “How do you know?”
“Because I know you,” he said. “Because I know you in your bones. Because I know without a doubt that you are not your mother and you could never be her.”
“I wish I were as confident of that as you are.”
Daniel said, “So do I.”
The storm passed and the sun came out to set the world on fire. Every raindrop on every leaf sparkled, and the air smelled new-washed, as it must have smelled on the day the earth was created.
Elizabeth had walked this way so often she would never have believed that it could take her by surprise, but it seemed that she was wrong.
The very first time she came to Lake in the Clouds, on a snowy winter day, it was Hannah who had showed her the way. How young they had both been. How unaware of the things ahead. The natural beauty of the place had overwhelmed her, and beyond that she was aware of her life shifting and changing with every step in ways she had never expected to find, certainly not here on the frontier with a man she had only known for weeks. A backwoodsman.
The jutting shoulder of the mountain curved abruptly inward like a mother protecting a child. The result was the glen the Mohawk called Lake in the Clouds. It measured almost a mile from the precipice to the falls at its innermost corner. Many things had changed here over the years, but the falls were constant.
“Boots,” Nathaniel said. “You look like you’re dream-walking.”
“It feels that way too,” she said. “I’m glad we came on foot.”
They caught sight of Gabriel. He was draped over a rock on the edge of the cornfield, bare-chested to the sun, and anyone else might have thought he was sleeping. Elizabeth knew he was not.
He sat up when they were within talking distance and raised a hand in greeting. Then he picked up his rifle, got to his feet, and trotted over. His expression was purposefully blank, and that seemed almost proper given what was about to happen.
Nathaniel said, “I look at him and I see my father.”
Gabriel had been almost grown when Hawkeye came home to Paradise. The resemblance had always been obvious, but when they finally stood side by side it seemed as if the past had come forward to merge with the present. Elizabeth was glad of it for Nathaniel’s sake, and for Gabriel’s. He would never have a moment’s doubt about where he belonged.
He leaned down to kiss his mother. “Everybody else is inside, waiting for you.”
“Who all would that be?”
“Bookman, Daniel and Martha, Ethan and Callie, Hannah and Levi. John Mayfair; he came up with Bookman. And Susanna. She’s there to see to Jemima if need be.”
“I’m sorry this burden fell on you,” Elizabeth told him, and he looked directly surprised.
“Not on me,” he said. “Susanna took one look and made Jemima her concern. You know how she is when she lets her Quaker side get hold of a problem.”
“What problem does she mean to solve?” Nathaniel asked.