Lake in the Clouds

  Hannah spread the letter over her knee to gain some time to think. “This was written in Philadelphia.”

  “Yes, but he will be in New-York City for a month and he has agreed to take on my case.” She lifted her chin. “Richard thinks he may be able to cure me.”

  “Cure you? Of what?”

  Kitty flushed, as if Hannah had insulted her in some way. “Other women suffer losses and then bear healthy children. My mother lost two before I was born and Elizabeth lost one before Robbie. Why should it not be possible for me to do the same?”

  The answer was in Kitty’s own face: hectic color had risen on her cheeks and her eyes were bright with new fever. Before Hannah could even think of how to say what she felt must be said, Kitty had reached forward to take her hands.

  “You must come with me. Richard won’t let me travel alone in my poor health and no one else will come with me, not even Curiosity. Did Richard not speak to you of this?”

  “No,” said Hannah slowly. “He must have been saving it for a surprise.”

  While Curiosity was on Hidden Wolf looking after Selah Voyager, her daughter Daisy Hench was in charge of the Todd household. Hannah would have liked to go into the kitchen, where Daisy would be busy putting the last of the meal together. The room would be crowded with Daisy’s children, with Ethan in their midst. Certainly Daisy could use another set of willing hands, and there would be the chance to talk a little while they worked. Curiosity’s oldest daughter was one of the quietest and most settled souls Hannah knew. No doubt Daisy had heard about this travel scheme and could provide her with details that Kitty must be withholding.

  But before she could think of an excuse to slip away, Richard arrived from the laboratory and then there was nothing to do but go in to table, where young Margit Hindle served the meal: ham, turnips and potatoes mashed with butter and pepper, pickled cabbage, cornbread, stewed apples. Margit was new to service and did not hesitate to study Hannah through her lashes, as fine and white as down, as was the hair tucked into her cap. Kitty was too busy with her travel plans to notice that Margit needed correction, and Hannah would not credit rude behavior by drawing attention to it.

  The food was good and Hannah was hungry, but she found it hard to concentrate on her plate, so strong was the urge to be away home. Richard sometimes looked at her from over the edge of his wine glass, but Hannah could read nothing from his expression, which made her strangely angrier than she already was about his maneuvering.

  “Galileo can take us as far as Johnstown,” Kitty announced, and at that the last of Hannah’s intention not to be drawn into the conversation slipped away.

  “Kitty,” she said firmly. “You will have to find somebody other than Galileo to take you to Johnstown. You must realize how poor his eyesight has become over the winter.”

  Kitty had been arranging her food in neat piles over the pattern of roses on her plate as she talked, but she stopped to blink at Hannah. “What do you mean, take me to Johnstown? You said you would come along.”

  “No, Kitty, I did not,” said Hannah firmly.

  “But you must.” Kitty spoke to Hannah, but she had turned to Richard. “Make her understand, Richard.”

  “I understand very well why you want me to come with you,” said Hannah, struggling with her temper. “And I hope that Dr. Ehrlich is everything you expect him to be. But I cannot travel so far, not now.”

  There was a moment of strained silence, and then a look of relief chased across Kitty’s face. “Oh,” she said. “You are thinking of Anna and Jed’s wedding. But we don’t intend to leave until next week. You can go to the wedding party—but I hope it is not Liam Kirby you are expecting to meet there. I hear that he is married, is that not so, Margit?”

  Margit bobbed her head. “That’s what he told Anna. It put Jemima Southern in such a foul temper to hear it that—”

  “Never mind,” Hannah interrupted. “I have no interest in Liam Kirby or Jemima Southern.”

  They were all looking at her: Kitty in surprise and confusion, Margit with an eagerness that said this conversation would soon be known all over the village, and even Richard was smiling into his wine glass. It was not often that Hannah felt herself go pale with anger, and it took all her self-control to temper her voice.

  She said, “And I was not thinking of Anna’s wedding party. I have work of my own to consider. I am very sorry for your predicament, but I cannot go with you to the city.”

  Kitty stood suddenly. “Oh, please,” she said, leaning forward. “You are my last hope.”

  Richard cleared his throat softly. “Sit down, Kitty, there’s no need to be so melodramatic. Eat something, you are trembling for hunger. I’ll continue this conversation with Hannah in my study. I think it is possible for us to come to an understanding.”

  “I think not,” said Hannah tightly. “And I must get home.”

  “Your patient can surely wait another ten minutes,” said Richard, with one eyebrow raised.

  All Hannah’s anger left as suddenly as it had come. A challenge, then. Was he guessing, or did he know something about Selah Voyager? It was a chance Hannah could not take. She nodded. “Ten minutes.”

  “Sometimes I forget you have a temper,” said Richard, when he had closed the study door behind them. “But then you’ve got your grandmother’s knack of keeping it to yourself most of the time.”

  Hannah closed her eyes and opened them again. “You didn’t bring me in here to talk about my grandmother.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He sat down behind his desk and began massaging the knotty scar tissue on his palm, which seemed to bother him quite often. For a moment Hannah had the urge to ask questions no one had ever dared ask him directly. She knew very well how he had come by his scars, but what would he say? I was once angry enough at your father to try to kill him, and this is what I got for my troubles.

  But he had evoked the memory of her grandmother, and Hannah could almost hear that familiar voice at her ear, reminding her that Richard Todd was nothing more than a man, and that he could only hold power over her if she gave it to him.

  She said, “I have no intention of going to the city. If it’s so important maybe you should take Kitty yourself.”

  He inclined his head. “I don’t want to interrupt Gabriel’s treatment.”

  “Not even for your wife’s health?”

  He sat back in his chair, folded his hands over his middle. “Ehrlich can’t do anything for Kitty, you know that as well as I do. If it will comfort her to see the man then she should see him, but I do not expect anything to come of it.”

  “Then why—”

  He waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s not Kitty I want to send to the city, it’s you.”

  He took a newspaper from a drawer and pushed it across the desk toward her. It was a well-thumbed copy of The Medical Repository, one Hannah had never seen though it was his habit to pass newspapers along to her when he had finished with them.

  “You may have heard that the New-York Dispensary opened a new institute in January. They’re calling it the Institution for the Inoculation of the Kine-Pox. The last smallpox epidemic put the fear of God in them, and they’re hoping to stay the next one.”

  Hannah looked at the report, but she did not pick it up. “Elizabeth’s cousin Will wrote to us about the new institute, yes.”

  “Good. Dr. Simon is on the medical board, and he will see to your training himself. You will learn how to cultivate the raw material and to carry out the vaccinations. The institution’s primary purpose is to provide free vaccination for the poor in the Almshouse, which is where you will work. When you come home again you can show me what you’ve learned. With any luck this should be the end of the pox in Paradise.”

  Hannah blinked, and her vision blurred. When she looked up she saw from his expression that she had not misunderstood him. There were a hundred questions going through her head, but only one came out when she opened her mouth. “Does he know I’m Mohawk?”

&n
bsp; “Yes.”

  “He’s willing to have a half-breed girl work in his institute.” Hannah paused, letting that idea hang there in the air where they could both look at it hard. “Will I be required to scrub floors?”

  “No,” said Richard, impatiently. “Dr. Simon will extend every professional courtesy. I wouldn’t worry about how your patients react to you, Hannah. The Almshouse inhabitants are thankful for any help they can get. They are mostly Irish and free blacks, anyway.”

  To offer the truth in the most offensive manner available was to rob it of some of its power and most of its appeal, but Hannah knew that it would do no good to point this out to Richard.

  “And why would you do this for me? Because of your friendship with my mother?”

  “No,” said Richard Todd, but Hannah saw that she had struck a nerve, just as she had intended to do; she had never raised the topic of her mother with him before. No doubt he hoped that she knew nothing of that history.

  “Then why?”

  “Because I don’t care to go and you’re the only person competent enough to send in my place. And you’ve got a natural talent for medicine. I haven’t said so to you before. Maybe I should have.”

  “I see.” But she didn’t, quite. Hannah could not picture such a place where a red-skinned woman would be allowed to work with white doctors. She would be an oddity of the first order, as interesting to them as a child born without legs or an illness they could not diagnose.

  Richard was watching her. He said, “I never thought of you as a coward. You would walk away from such an opportunity because you are afraid?”

  He meant to anger her, and of course he had, but Hannah would not show him that.

  “There are no guarantees,” he went on. “Except that it will be hard and you will wish sometimes that you had stayed at home.”

  The silence between them stretched out. Finally Hannah said, “Tell me why this doctor would agree to such a thing.”

  “Valentine Simon is active in the Manumission Society and he’s interested in the education of the colored races, but he doesn’t suffer fools. You’ll have to prove to him that you’re worth his trouble. And—” Richard paused. “He’s a close friend of Will Spencer’s. I expect he read my letter and went straight to Spencer to ask him about you. It took some time, but it’s all been settled.”

  Will Spencer. If anyone could pave a way for her into New-York’s medical community, it must be Elizabeth’s cousin Will. Another transplanted Englishman, but no loyalist: Will had fled rather than be tried for sedition, as had other members of Corresponding Societies with leanings toward republicanism. He had left England, but he remained Viscount Durbeyfield, the eldest son of the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and most Americans were still enchanted by a title and influenced by the income that went with it. The Spencers were widely known and highly respected in the city, for good cause.

  This opportunity before her was real. A flush of exhilaration made Hannah’s fingers jerk, and she wound her arms around herself and rocked forward to think. She said, “You arranged all this without asking me first.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I’m asking you now. You don’t want to do it?”

  But she did. Of course she did. She would spend enough time at the institute to learn whatever there was to know about vaccination. Smallpox had killed and maimed too many Kahnyen’kehàka to count, and the idea that there might be a way to stop it was more temptation than any other incentive he might have offered. When she had vaccinated the whites in Paradise, she could go on to the Kahnyen’kehàka at Good Pasture and then to the rest of the Six Nations.

  If she turned him down she would be denying not only herself, but all of her mother’s people, and Richard knew it. In return he was asking her to take on Kitty, to relieve him of that burden for a little while at least, until she could be delivered to the care of this Dr. Ehrlich.

  He had manipulated her like a child, boxed her in as surely as if he had hammered the lid down with a hundred nails. It stung, and it would continue to sting, but there was nothing she could do but pay that price. In her irritation Hannah said, “And if I won’t go?”

  Richard smiled again, an unsettling sight. “Then we will hope that the smallpox stays away from Paradise this summer.”

  It didn’t surprise her, the fact that Richard Todd would risk the village, if it suited his purposes. He could be ruthless; his mangled hand was proof enough of that. The Kahnyen’kehàka who raised him called him Cat-Eater, a tribute to the fact that even as a boy he would go to any lengths to survive. And there it was, the little bit of power she had over him, the connection they shared. He did not like to be reminded that in spite of his white skin and red hair, he had once been Kahnyen’kehàka; that some part of him would always be Kahnyen’kehàka.

  In the language of her mother’s people she said to him, “Maybe when I have learned what this Dr. Simon has to teach, I will travel west and find your brother Throws-Far and his children. So that all your family is safe from the smallpox.”

  A flash of recognition then, in the way his face lost all expression. And he surprised her still, answering her in the same language. “If that is the journey you want to make, Walks-Ahead, then you must first go to the city.”

  After a long time Hannah said, “I will speak to my father.”

  “You leave next Monday,” said Richard, in English. “After the wedding party.” And he smiled, something he did very rarely.

  “About Galileo—”

  Richard waved a hand. “Of course he can’t make the trip. I’ll arrange for Joshua Hench to take you as far as Johnstown.”

  APRIL 15. EVENING.

  Chill at dawn with some frost. A flock of horned larks in the cornfield at first light. The chipmunks have come up from their winter nests. Clear skies until evening.

  Eulalia Wilde stopped me today in the village to ask if I would look at her ankle, having turned it in a fox hole. She is worried that she won’t be able to dance at Anna Hauptmann’s wedding party. I promised to bring her an ointment but could not give much hope of dancing anytime soon.

  Spent this morning assisting Dr. Todd in his laboratory. He has adapted Dr. Beddoes’s treatment for phthisis pulmonalis to Gabriel Oak’s case:

  Pass vapor of water over charcoal heated to ignition in an iron tube. Carburetted hydrogen gas will pass into the receiver. Agitate over lime water. Dilute with atmospheric air, in the proportion three quarters of air to one quarter carbureted gas.

  The gas has the ripe odor of a crowded cow barn, but Friend Oak took it without complaint, by means of a small tube passing through a cork in the mouth of the receiver. Two treatments in ninety minutes brought about giddiness, headache, weakness, and a quickened pulse. After the second treatment his lungs put out a great deal of bloody foul matter.

  Upon parting he gave me another of his drawings for my brother and sister, of some sparrows at a woodpile, as true as life and sweetly observed. I fear he must soon pass over, in spite of the doctor’s best efforts.

  Selah Voyager’s fever broke in the night while Curiosity sat up with her. Her skin is now cool to the touch and she is hungry. We continue the willow bark and meadowsweet tea and have started venison broth to fortify her.

  This morning Liam Kirby rode for Johnstown at first light as he threatened.

  Dr. Todd has asked me to go to New-York City with his wife, where I am to learn the Jennings method of vaccination at the new Kine-Pox Institution. My father bids me reconsider. Elizabeth did not encourage or discourage me, but she left a note on my bed, one of her quotations and I record it here because it rests uneasy in my mind:

  Adam was lonely, so he was given Lilith; he wished to lie with her, but she refused. We were created by the same God, she said, turning away from him; why should I lie beneath you? When Adam tried to force her to his will, Lilith cried out the name of the creator, whereupon she rose into the air, and flew away to the Red Sea.

  Chapter 9

  “What
perfectly awful weather,” said the widow Kuick. She looked out her window into the chilly wet with a grim smile. “Perhaps we will have snow before the day is over. That would be very appropriate. Yes, most gratifying indeed.”

  Isaiah was half-asleep over the bible on his lap, but he raised his head. “Appropriate?”

  The widow sniffed and sat up straighter as she quoted, raising her voice to fill the room, “‘So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm.’”

  “Ah,” said Isaiah. “The wedding.”

  Jemima stilled for a moment in her scrubbing of the hearthstones to hear the widow’s answer.

  “Yes, the wedding. Such foolishness. One husband is enough for any woman, as I told Mrs. Hauptmann myself, and Constable McGarrity too. If he must marry again there are enough young women without husbands to pick from.”

  Isaiah lifted an elegant hand to hide his yawn. “Does that mean you won’t be going?”

  “To catch my death in this wet cold?” The widow peered down at her needlework with a frown. “Certainly not. And neither should you, my boy, if you know what is good for you. Jemima!”

  “Yes, mum?”

  “Tell Becca to put away the black bombazine she laid out for me. You’ll go down to the village to make my apologies.”

  “Yes, mum. What shall I say exactly?”

  The widow raised her head to glare at her. “The truth, girl. The truth. While you’re there you collect the money Constable McGarrity owes me for Reuben’s fiddle playing.”

  Becca and Dolly were waiting for her in the kitchen, as anxious as hens. Becca’s cheeks were flushed with color, while Dolly looked as if she were going to be sick. Jemima walked past them without saying a word and began to put on her pattens.

  “Well?” Becca demanded. “Has she given permission? Can we go to the party?”