Queen of Swords
Page 36

It is not my time. She said the words aloud.
When she next opened her eyes—five minutes, five hours, five days later—a woman was standing over her. Yellow-Sapling, the Choctaw healer who came in the very early morning to sort through the herbs and medicines she kept in the little clinic, where it was warm and dry, and where it was meant to be safe. Hannah could not speak her name or even raise a hand, but she could be thankful that it was this strong woman who had come to her first. This Indian woman who had survived war and stayed behind to see to the others who had not. There were tears on her own cheeks, but Yellow-Sapling’s face was dry.
She studied Hannah for a long moment, her expression placid but her eyes full of fire. Then she went away and came back with water. She dipped a clean rag into the water and then squeezed it so that the cool wet spread over Hannah’s lips and tongue and down her swollen throat. Yellow-Sapling chanted under her breath in her own language as she worked, her touch light and sure. There was a fire in the hearth—Hannah had no memory of it being lit—and the smell of herbs burning, and of tobacco thrown into the flames to honor the Great Spirit and ask his help.
The rhythm of the song Yellow-Sapling was singing lulled Hannah to sleep, and when she woke again she was lying between clean sheets someplace else, someplace she recognized but couldn’t name. Paul and Julia Savard were bent over her, their mouths moving as they talked. Hannah wondered why her hearing had left her, and then she realized that the pounding of her own blood in her ears was deafening, and worse: She was full of fever, her body a vessel filled to the bursting with steam. A fever bigger than her broken bones and torn skin.
The malaria had come to claim her again, and it bore her off before she could answer even one of their questions.
They gathered in the small apartment on the topmost floor: Julia and Paul Savard, Jennet and Luke, and a man who was a stranger to all of them. He introduced himself as Captain Aloysius Urquhart of the U.S. Army, the liaison between the armed forces and the New Orleans constabulary.
Jennet wanted nothing to do with Urquhart. She wanted Ben Savard, but he had been sent off on some mission to the west, and could not be reached. Ben Savard would not be satisfied with talk, as these men—her own husband, Hannah’s brother—seemed to be. Luke was as angry as Jennet had ever seen him, but still he stood here.
With Julia sitting beside her, Jennet was able to control her own temper while the men talked of the law, and of customs, and what might be done. Urquhart was treating the attack on Hannah like a prank, as if Honoré Poiterin were a rude boy who had taken another man’s horse out for a run. The sound of his voice slid down her throat and filled her belly and festered there like a cancer.
“…nothing much to be done without witnesses,” Urquhart was saying. When he spoke a mouthful of perfectly straight and white teeth flashed like knives between lips the incongruous red of strawberries. He was hatless, with long greasy hair and a mass of curling dull blond beard stained tobacco brown. One broad thumb, its nail the color of pitch, was curled loosely around the upright barrel of a long rifle in the casual way of a man who never put his gun away from him. He was from Kentucky, and Jennet had to pay attention to follow the unfamiliar rhythm of his English.
Now she stood. Urquhart didn’t turn toward her, but she would not be silenced by his disapproval. She said, “We know who assaulted my sister-in-law, Captain. There is no doubt about that, not after his grandmother forced her way into Mrs. Livingston’s parlor yesterday afternoon.”
Urquhart’s look was impatient. “Pardon me, ma’am, but I don’t see the connection there at all. If your sister-in-law were to wake up out of her fever sleep and give a positive identification, maybe we could do something—”
Jennet interrupted him. “Then what about Leo? He came back here with Hannah last night, he might have seen Poiterin. Somebody must have seen him.”
“If it was Poiterin,” said Urquhart again. “There were a lot of drunk men in the streets last night.”
Jennet turned to Paul Savard. “Why is Leo not here?”
“We can’t find him,” Paul Savard said. His color was poor, and there were new lines creasing his cheeks.
“You’ll pardon me for pointing this out again,” Urquhart said, “but nobody was killed here. All we’ve got so far is an Indian woman who was beat.”
Luke stepped between Jennet and the captain. Urquhart’s hand tightened on the rifle barrel.
Luke said, “We’ve got a woman who was beaten within an inch of her life and repeatedly raped. Something will be done, by God.”
Urquhart’s tone sharpened. “There are bigger problems to be dealt with right now than a Redbone woman being roughly handled.”
Jennet pushed forward, jerking her arm free of Luke’s grasp. “Then I want Mme. Poiterin arrested for trespass and for her threats against me and my son. Mrs. Livingston was a witness to that; it happened in her own parlor. Will you ignore that, as well?”
“Mrs. Livingston filed no complaint, as far as I know,” Urquhart said. “But I’ll go there now and see if she wants to make a statement. If she won’t, there’s nothing I can do.”
He put the hat he had been holding in his left hand on his head, nodded, and walked out of the room.
Jennet said, “If I had a gun I would shoot him.”
“Good thing you’re unarmed then,” Luke said. “We’ve got enough trouble as it is.”