“Mushrooms have no smell unless they’re right under thy nose,” she said, yawning. “But yes, please.”
She vanished upstairs, and Ian turned to go and announce their arrival. As he did so, though, he heard footsteps on the landing above and turned to see Silvia, with Prudence and Patience, the girls gleaming with cleanliness, their hair tightly braided under their caps.
“Well met, Friends,” he said, smiling at the girls. They wished him a good evening, but were plainly in some agitation of mind, and so was their mother.
“Can I help?” he said quietly, as she stepped down beside him. She shook her head, and he saw that she was wound tight as the string of a top.
“We are well,” she said, but a nervous swallow ran down her throat, and she had a fold of her skirt still clutched tight. “We—are going to meet Gabriel. In the parlor.”
Patience and Prudence were clearly trying hard to preserve some sense of decorum, but it was just as clear that they were fizzing with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
“Aye?” Ian said. He looked at Silvia and said, low-voiced, “Ye’ve talked to them, of course?”
She nodded and touched her cap to make sure it was straight. “I told them what has happened to their father and how he comes to be here,” she said. Her long upper lip pressed down tight for a moment. “I said that he will tell them … everything else.”
Or maybe not, Ian thought, but he bowed to them, ushering them toward the parlor. A small giggle escaped Prudence, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.
To Ian’s surprise, Silvia opened the parlor door and motioned the girls in, but promptly shut it after them. She leaned against the wall beside it, dead white in the face, eyes closed. He thought he’d best not leave her and leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, waiting.
“Papa?” one of the girls said inside the parlor, almost in a whisper. Her sister said, louder, “Papa,” and then both of them shrieked “Papa, Papa, Papa!” and there was the sound of feet thundering across a wooden floor and the screech of a chair’s legs as bodies struck it.
“Prudie!” Gabriel’s voice was choked, filled with joy. “Pattie! Oh, my darlings, oh, my darling girls!”
“Papa, Papa!” they kept saying, their exclamations interrupting each other’s half-asked questions and observations, and Gabriel said their names over and over, like an incantation against their disappearance. Everyone was crying.
“I missed you so,” he said hoarsely. “Oh, my babies. My sweet, dear babies.”
Silvia was crying, too, but silently, a crumpled white handkerchief pressed to her mouth. She motioned to Ian, and he took her arm, helping her down the corridor, for she walked as though drunk, bumping into the walls and into him. She wanted to go outside, and he grabbed a cloak from the hook by the door and wrapped it hastily round her, guiding her down the wooden steps.
He took her to the tree his mother and the Sachem had used for their shooting practice, observing absently that they—or someone—had been at it again, for the torn corner of a pink calico handkerchief flapped from a nail, the lower edges ragged and singed brown. There was a bench, though, and he sat Silvia down and sat beside her, his shoulder touching hers while she wept, shaking with it.
She stopped after a few minutes, and sat still, twisting the wet handkerchief between her hands.
“I keep trying to think of a way,” she said thickly. “But I can’t.”
“A way to—？” he began cautiously. “To let the girls stay wi’ their father?”
She nodded, slowly. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, where the thin snow was trampled and footmarks had scuffed through it, leaving a moil of dirt, snow, and slicks of half-frozen meltwater.
“But I can’t,” she said again, and blew her nose. Ian disliked the painful look of the wet handkerchief applied to her raw, red nose, and handed her a dry though paint-stained one from his sleeve. “Two of my daughters are his—but I have three. Even if—”
Ian made a small noise in his throat, and she looked at him sharply.
“What?”
“I’m sure he’d ha’ told ye himself, were ye on speaking terms,” Ian said. “But Thayendanegea told me this morning, that he has two wee bairns wi’ the woman he … ehm …” She’d have found out anyway, he argued silently, and she would, but he still felt like a guilty toad, a feeling not improved by the look of naked betrayal on her face.