Queen of Swords
Page 18
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They passed into another part of the city, far more run-down. Fewer of the children on the street were colored, and more of them called to each other in Spanish. The wooden gutters that lined the lanes in the rest of town were missing here or broken, and puddles of dirty water and waste and trash pockmarked the road. A half dozen piglets dug in a pile of refuse, curled tails working furiously and without pause, even when a window opened and a shower of slops rained down on them.
They passed a butcher and then skirted a great heap of headless, hollowed-out carcasses outside a tannery. The stink in the air was so thick that Hannah’s eyes watered and her gorge rose sharply and it took all her concentration to make her stomach settle. Then Ben turned a corner.
Hannah stopped, in surprise and unease. It was as if a whole village—any of the Indian villages she had known at different times in her life—had been fit into the short lane of cottages. Women and older girls sat in doorways, grinding corn or tending pots hung over fires made in the open. A grandmother scraped a deer hide stretched on a makeshift frame, an infant with a lesion on its cheek looking over her shoulder. Children ran back and forth with sticks, chasing a ball made of a pig’s bladder. Three old men, their faces folded with wrinkles, sat on a blanket on the ground, their hands open, palm up, in their laps. A water barrel stood just next to them, a tin dipper on a rawhide thong dangling from the rim.
From across the crowd one of the old men looked at Hannah with milky turquoise eyes, his face as impassive as a sleeping infant’s.
She said, “These people don’t belong in this city. What are they doing here?”
“Some of them are slaves,” Ben said. He looked at her with eyes just the same color as the old man’s, but his gaze was sharp and knowing and anything but passive. “Their masters put them into these cottages and hire them out as day labor. They don’t run away because some of the children are kept on the plantation as surety. In the spring they’ll be called back there for the planting.”
“There are no young men.”
“They’ve been lent to the planters who have cane fields. The harvest will start soon.”
“All of them, slaves?” Her voice shook a little. She had understood what Ben told her earlier, but to see the truth of it was something very different. Some day she would be among the Kahnyen’kehàka again and she would tell them about this place, where the Real People were bought and sold and worked like mules.
Ben was looking at her with something like sympathy in his expression. He said, “Not all. What you see here is some of what Jackson left behind him after Horseshoe Bend.”
Horseshoe Bend. Hannah shook her head, to rid it of the images.
Ben took her first to see a man who worked in a hut just large enough for himself and his cobbler’s bench. He was bent over a boot with a loose heel. There were only three fingers on each hand, and one leg was gone below the knee, but otherwise he looked healthy, if not especially well fed. He was dressed in rough work clothes, and his hair had been shorn.
The dark eyes met Hannah’s first and then moved on to Ben, and he smiled and rose from his work. The language he spoke was completely unfamiliar to Hannah, but she did notice that beside her, Ben had stiffened, ever so slightly.
“What?” she asked him, when he had replied.
“Blue-Deer says he is glad to see that I have taken a wife, and that there will be wailing from Mobile to Galveston.”
Hannah shot Ben a sharp look and got a calm one in return.
“And you corrected this misconception.”
“I told him what he needs to know.”
“What name did he call you?”
Ben inclined his head and smiled. “He calls me by my Choctaw name, Waking-Bear.”
Then Ben turned back to the cobbler and took up the conversation again. Hannah watched Blue-Deer’s expression shift and soften, and then he replied.
“He has a son who is going blind in one eye,” Ben translated. “He would take him home to the healers in his village, but the village is gone.”
“I will do what I can,” Hannah said. “If he will come to see me at the clinic.”
That easily her decision was made.
All the people she met had a few things in common. They were Indian, though many had had at least one African or white parent or grandparent. One in six or seven had eyes the same startling turquoise as Ben Savard. They were all poor, and they were all pleased to see Ben, and eager to talk to him. And once he had introduced Hannah, they were eager to talk to her, too. They told her about fevers and wounds, about cures they had tried, the ones that had worked and the ones that hadn’t; about cousins and sisters and grandfathers who had died suddenly or slowly; about children who wasted away even when food was plentiful; about rashes that came and went without explanation; ulcers and coughs and belly cramps.
For the next hour they worked their way from one family to another. Sometimes they could speak French, but mostly they spoke the local Creole or their own languages, and then Ben acted as translator.
An old woman who had the look of a clan mother asked her the question she had been waiting for. Hannah recited her lineage, and Ben translated.
I am Walks-Ahead, daughter of Sings-from-Books of the Kahnyen’kehàka, called the Mohawk by the O’seronni. We are the People of the Longhouse, Keepers of the Eastern Door, the Kahnyen’kehàka of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee People. We live far to the north of this place, in the Endless Forests. Where it is so cold in the winter that the birds flee to the south, and snow makes a blanket for Brother Bear that lasts until April.
They passed a butcher and then skirted a great heap of headless, hollowed-out carcasses outside a tannery. The stink in the air was so thick that Hannah’s eyes watered and her gorge rose sharply and it took all her concentration to make her stomach settle. Then Ben turned a corner.
Hannah stopped, in surprise and unease. It was as if a whole village—any of the Indian villages she had known at different times in her life—had been fit into the short lane of cottages. Women and older girls sat in doorways, grinding corn or tending pots hung over fires made in the open. A grandmother scraped a deer hide stretched on a makeshift frame, an infant with a lesion on its cheek looking over her shoulder. Children ran back and forth with sticks, chasing a ball made of a pig’s bladder. Three old men, their faces folded with wrinkles, sat on a blanket on the ground, their hands open, palm up, in their laps. A water barrel stood just next to them, a tin dipper on a rawhide thong dangling from the rim.
From across the crowd one of the old men looked at Hannah with milky turquoise eyes, his face as impassive as a sleeping infant’s.
She said, “These people don’t belong in this city. What are they doing here?”
“Some of them are slaves,” Ben said. He looked at her with eyes just the same color as the old man’s, but his gaze was sharp and knowing and anything but passive. “Their masters put them into these cottages and hire them out as day labor. They don’t run away because some of the children are kept on the plantation as surety. In the spring they’ll be called back there for the planting.”
“There are no young men.”
“They’ve been lent to the planters who have cane fields. The harvest will start soon.”
“All of them, slaves?” Her voice shook a little. She had understood what Ben told her earlier, but to see the truth of it was something very different. Some day she would be among the Kahnyen’kehàka again and she would tell them about this place, where the Real People were bought and sold and worked like mules.
Ben was looking at her with something like sympathy in his expression. He said, “Not all. What you see here is some of what Jackson left behind him after Horseshoe Bend.”
Horseshoe Bend. Hannah shook her head, to rid it of the images.
Ben took her first to see a man who worked in a hut just large enough for himself and his cobbler’s bench. He was bent over a boot with a loose heel. There were only three fingers on each hand, and one leg was gone below the knee, but otherwise he looked healthy, if not especially well fed. He was dressed in rough work clothes, and his hair had been shorn.
The dark eyes met Hannah’s first and then moved on to Ben, and he smiled and rose from his work. The language he spoke was completely unfamiliar to Hannah, but she did notice that beside her, Ben had stiffened, ever so slightly.
“What?” she asked him, when he had replied.
“Blue-Deer says he is glad to see that I have taken a wife, and that there will be wailing from Mobile to Galveston.”
Hannah shot Ben a sharp look and got a calm one in return.
“And you corrected this misconception.”
“I told him what he needs to know.”
“What name did he call you?”
Ben inclined his head and smiled. “He calls me by my Choctaw name, Waking-Bear.”
Then Ben turned back to the cobbler and took up the conversation again. Hannah watched Blue-Deer’s expression shift and soften, and then he replied.
“He has a son who is going blind in one eye,” Ben translated. “He would take him home to the healers in his village, but the village is gone.”
“I will do what I can,” Hannah said. “If he will come to see me at the clinic.”
That easily her decision was made.
All the people she met had a few things in common. They were Indian, though many had had at least one African or white parent or grandparent. One in six or seven had eyes the same startling turquoise as Ben Savard. They were all poor, and they were all pleased to see Ben, and eager to talk to him. And once he had introduced Hannah, they were eager to talk to her, too. They told her about fevers and wounds, about cures they had tried, the ones that had worked and the ones that hadn’t; about cousins and sisters and grandfathers who had died suddenly or slowly; about children who wasted away even when food was plentiful; about rashes that came and went without explanation; ulcers and coughs and belly cramps.
For the next hour they worked their way from one family to another. Sometimes they could speak French, but mostly they spoke the local Creole or their own languages, and then Ben acted as translator.
An old woman who had the look of a clan mother asked her the question she had been waiting for. Hannah recited her lineage, and Ben translated.
I am Walks-Ahead, daughter of Sings-from-Books of the Kahnyen’kehàka, called the Mohawk by the O’seronni. We are the People of the Longhouse, Keepers of the Eastern Door, the Kahnyen’kehàka of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee People. We live far to the north of this place, in the Endless Forests. Where it is so cold in the winter that the birds flee to the south, and snow makes a blanket for Brother Bear that lasts until April.
