“A peaceful death, is what she said to me. How she plans to get Jemima there, that I don’t know beyond the fact that the two of them sat out in the sun near the falls for most of the morning. Now Jemima has stopped talking to anybody but Susanna.”

Nathaniel said, “As much as I like and admire Susanna, I don’t think anybody could reach Jemima anymore. If anything has tamed her, it’s the cancer.”

“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “I suppose you’re about to find out.”

—

Hawkeye built the original cabin nearest the falls when he brought Cora there as a bride. That cabin was gone, burned to the ground in the year ’06. In its place Nathaniel had built a proper house, far more comfortable and conveniently laid out, but Elizabeth couldn’t approach this spot without missing the simpler cabin where she had borne all but her youngest.

“My mind keeps wandering away to the past,” she told Nathaniel. “Looking for an escape route of some kind, I suppose.”

“We’ll get through this, Boots, and so will Martha and Callie and the boy.”

Elizabeth was trying to decide if that was true when they came into the main room. Someone had rearranged the furniture to suit the purpose at hand—benches in a half circle around the chair where Jemima sat, a table for Bookman and one for Ethan, who would record the proceedings. Someone else might have taken on that task today, but Elizabeth kept that thought to herself. There was no one she’d trust more.

Jemima sat apart, bundled like an infant. Her color was off and there were unfamiliar hollows in her cheeks, but the surprise was her expression. Dampened, was the word that came to mind.

The most striking thing about Jemima when she was in health was the intensity of her gaze, always alert for injustice against herself. Now Jemima sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap, her mouth slightly open. She blinked slowly, and Elizabeth realized that Hannah had given her something—had given her quite a lot of something—for the pain.

Magistrate Bookman was at his table looking over the papers he had received from Elizabeth a few hours before. The others sat as though they had been sworn to silence, unwilling to talk in front of Jemima for reasons that might be called superstitious. Callie sat alone on a bench with Levi standing behind her, rocking back and forth on his feet, his chin cradled on his chest.

Jim Bookman looked up from the papers and cleared his throat.

“We’re here at the request of Levi Fiddler to hear evidence against Mrs. Jemima—Focht, is it?”

“For the moment,” Jemima said.

“John Mayfair is here as your counsel.”

“If he likes,” Jemima said. She sent a glance to Susanna, who sat in a corner, straight of back, her head canted to one side as she listened.

“I call this hearing to order. In the matter of the death of Cookie Fiddler, a manumitted slave, on or about the eighteenth day of November in the year 1812. At the time there was no clear decision on the nature of Mrs. Fiddler’s death—Mr. Middleton, will you read the findings?”

Ethan had been waiting. He began without hesitation.

Statement Submitted into Evidence
Signed by Hannah Bonner, Physician
Witnessed by Mrs. Elizabeth Bonner
and Ethan Middleton, Esq.

On the 26th day of December I examined the remains of Mrs. Cookie Fiddler in the presence of Mrs. Bonner and Mrs. Freeman of this village, as Dr. Todd is recently deceased and there is no other with the training to perform this last service.

The subject was a mulatto Negro woman of about sixty years, very small and slight of stature but well nourished and without obvious external signs of illness. Both ears pierced. The body bore numerous scars, primarily of whippings to the back and legs. The right fibula was once broken and set crookedly.

First observations indicated that the subject died by drowning when the water was at or very near freezing, for her remains were well preserved. On autopsy it was determined that her lungs were in fact filled with water, which indicates that she was alive when she fell into the lake. All other internal organs appeared unremarkable for a healthy woman of her years.

The only wound on her person was on the back of her head, an indentation about a half inch deep, three fingers wide, and a half foot long, regular in shape, as might have been made by a blow with a wood stave or by falling and striking the head on a wood structure such as the handrail or edge of a bridge. The blow was severe enough to slice the scalp to the skull, cleave the skull itself, and render the subject insensible. There were no other signs of struggle, that is, no broken fingernails or wounds as might have been received in a struggle for her life. In addition, there were a few grains of sand clutched in her hand and found in the folds of her clothing.

Thus is it my opinion that Cookie Fiddler’s death may have been an accident or a murder, but it is not in my power to declare which on the basis of the evidence I had before me. I surmise that she received a blow to the head and fell unconscious into the lake, where she drowned.

This statement dictated to and taken down by Ethan Middle-ton and signed by my own hand and sworn to be true to the best of my knowledge and ability:

Hannah Bonner, also known as Walks-Ahead by the
Kahnyen’kehàka of the Wolf Longhouse at Good Pasture
and by Walking-Woman by her husband’s people, the Seneca,
this first day of January 1813.

“This is an unusual situation,” said Bookman. “Maybe the oddest I’ve ever come across since I’ve been a magistrate, up in Plattsville or here. Mr. Fiddler, is there some new evidence come to light these eleven years later that makes you believe a trial is warranted?”