The Endless Forest
Page 33

She held her breath for two beats, and then said, “You have better things to do; you must.”
He looked toward the house. “I’m supposed to meet Ben, but he’s late. So no, at this moment I have nothing better to do. It’s not too often I lend a hand at this kind of thing, you know. Be a shame to waste the opportunity.”
He stirred for a full moment while Martha tried to find something to say, but then he had had enough of waiting.
“You mad about something?”
“Not in the least.”
“Now see, I would say you’re plenty mad by the look on your face.”
“I am not mad,” Martha said with all the polite nonchalance she could muster. “Thank you kindly for your help.”
“Mad,” Daniel said. “As a wet hen.”
It took a great deal of effort to calm down, but Martha managed. She drew in a deep breath. “If I was being short with you, I apologize.”
Daniel nodded. “Well, that’s to be expected. You come back here after all those years in the big city, your manners ain’t what they used to be.”
“My manners?” Martha heard herself squeak. “My manners! What about your manners?”
He raised an eyebrow in what was clearly mock surprise. “And here I thought I was lending a hand.”
“You did. You are. But—”
“—one road or another I managed to make you mad.”
Her color was rising; she could feel it. “You you you—watched me. And my skirts—I’m not—You watch me.”
“What’s wrong with me watching you?”
“It’s unseemly.”
“It don’t seem to me anything out of the ordinary to look at a pretty girl all flushed from the heat. That’s not what you’re mad about. Not really.”
“You are being—” Martha stopped. “I see. You are winding me up.”
He laughed outright. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, giving him her most severe look. “Why would you?”
The very hardest part, once she turned away, was banishing anything that might be taken for a smile from her own face.
Chapter XVI
At supper Jennet kept them all amused with her day’s adventures. She had spent part of it with Lily, part of it with the children, and the third and more difficult part in the village, sweeping mud.
“I’ve never been so dirty,” she declared. “Not even that spring we spent on Nut Island. Do you remember, Hannah? We even had mud in—” she paused and looked around the table. “Places where mud isnae welcome.”
Martha had been wondering how to raise this very subject, and now she took the opportunity. “Would that be the time when—” Everyone was looking at her, but not in an unkind way. It was Hannah who first understood.
“Yes,” she said. “It was then that your father came into the garrison gaol. He died a few days later, of his wounds.”
Elizabeth was surprised. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you about this?” She looked around the table. “Three of you were there. Jennet, Hannah, and Daniel.”
“And Blue-Jay,” Daniel said.
“Yes, of course.”
“You can’t remember very much of those days,” she said to her son, as if her command might keep away things best forgot.
“I remember,” he said.
Martha felt his gaze on her. His tone was unremarkable, easy.
“We talked, Liam and me, more than once. He asked me about you, Martha.”
This afternoon she had sworn to herself that she would avoid Daniel Bonner at all costs, and now she was eager to ask him a dozen questions.
“We all have stories about Liam,” Nathaniel said. “Maybe it was thoughtless of us to think you knew them too.”
“Yes, it was thoughtless,” said his wife. “But it’s a mistake that can be rectified. He really was the sweetest, friendliest boy, but he had a talent for getting himself in trouble. Wouldn’t you agree, Nathaniel?”
“I can still see him peeking in the schoolhouse window,” he said.
“Oooh,” said Birdie. “Is this the story about the ink bottle and a winkle?”
Daniel watched Martha’s face as she took in the stories, one after the other. He had a story of his own about Liam and Jemima both, but he would not share it at this table, and maybe not ever. Lily was the only one who knew the whole of it, and she wasn’t here. He wondered if his sister thought of that summer’s day, and if her memories were as clear as his own.
It had been some years later that it had occurred to him that what they had stumbled upon that day at Eagle Rock was the act that resulted in Martha’s presence in the world. When he brought this up to Lily, she had looked surprised.
“All you have to do is count the months,” she said. “Or easier still, look at Martha. From the day she was born she looked like Liam.”
They had been children themselves, hardly nine years old. Not ignorant of the ways of men and women—they had grown up on the frontier, with every kind of animal around and unconcerned about a child’s curiosity. What a strange, disturbing day that had been, but if it had not happened at all, Martha would not be sitting at this table; she would not exist in this world.
His father was saying, “I don’t know that we should talk about Billy, at least not now.”
But Martha insisted that she wanted to know everything about her father and her uncle both, good and bad.