Queen of Swords
Page 44

“Will this make things more difficult for us? Should I be doing something?”
“You should concentrate on getting better,” Luke said.
In fact Hannah was feeling a little dizzy and very tired, and her eyes both ached and itched. She said, “Don’t go quite yet. Tell me what to expect. Dr. Savard, have you ever been in a city under martial law?”
“No,” he said. “Though I’ve heard stories.”
Luke studied the floor between his boots. He said, “For you and the clinic, and for us, there won’t be many changes. The city is closed off; you can’t get in or out without permission from headquarters. Every able-bodied man will be called into one kind of service or another. The courts have shut down, and business has pretty much come to a full stop. There’s a curfew for everybody now, as there always has been for the slaves.” He drew a piece of paper from his jacket. “Unless you’ve got a military pass. They’ll give you one,” he said to the doctor. “All medical people will get them.”
Luke turned to Hannah. “Things are coming to a head. The British are on dry land and making advances. I expect we’ll see the first real confrontation within days, but with any luck not until after the Kentucky and Tennessee regiments get here.”
Dr. Savard said, “Is it as bad as it looks?”
Luke’s mouth pursed itself while he thought. “Yes.”
Hannah closed her eyes. “I can’t get away from this war. It will never end.”
“It will end,” Luke said quietly. “One way or the other. Listen, Savard, I need to raise the topic of evacuation with you. The women and children—”
“Julia won’t have it,” said the doctor. “There’s no hope of her going. I’ll talk to her again about the children. What about your wife and son?”
“Just as stubborn,” Luke said.
Hannah said, “You could make her go, you know you could. You don’t want her to.”
That struck home, she could see the discomfort of it in the way he looked away. Finally he said, “I’m following my instincts.”
Hannah sat back. “Then I must trust your decision.”
Later, when Hannah had gotten into bed, Clémentine herself appeared in the door with a tray and an expression that brooked no dissent. Clémentine had never been very forthcoming, and Hannah had never pushed, out of respect and also because of what Ben had told her—and she herself had seen—of the animosity between the Africans and the Indians in this part of the world. If Paul Savard said that Clémentine had changed her mind about Hannah, he must be believed, though her long face with its deep-set eyes showed no hint of approval as far as Hannah could see.
And so Hannah ate the soup and the bread and drank the bitter tisane while Clémentine waited by the fire, darning stockings and keeping her thoughts to herself.
At the door she paused. She said, “There’s a bell hanging right here. You ring it good and hard if there’s any trouble. I’ll hear it.”
“Thank you,” Hannah said.
In the last moments before she fell asleep in the glow of the banked fire, she thought of Ben Savard, who had been away a long time.
Chapter 43
The room that served as a surgery was across the hall from the apothecary. Until now it had seldom been used; this was, in the first line, a kine-pox clinic, and only secondarily a charity hospital. Surgical cases were mostly referred elsewhere.
There was a short row of chairs outside the surgery, all of them occupied. Some of the men talked quietly, some slept with their heads propped on the wall. A few were playing cards, and one was dictating a letter to Rachel. In this setting, the lighthearted girl who took such pleasure in parties and dinners was unrecognizable. Here she was her mother’s daughter, quiet, attentive, efficient. She glanced up at Hannah as she passed and gave her a grim smile.
Julia was waiting inside the surgery. It was the lightest room in the house, with a bank of windows that looked out on the street, but the day was overcast and the lamps had been lit. In the middle of the room was a large table that might have once been in a kitchen. Julia had just finished scrubbing it, and her face was pink with exertion. She wore an apron that covered her from throat to toe, and her hair was tied with a large handkerchief.
“I was hoping you’d be able to assist,” Hannah said.
“We can call on Rachel, too, if we need her.” Julia used the back of her hand to wipe a stray hair from her cheek.
Hannah took an apron for herself from a hook on the wall. She rolled up her sleeves and tied a large square of linen over her plaited hair, and then she stood for a long minute and studied the row of surgical instruments laid out neatly on a tray. A variety of surgical knives with down-turned points and wide spines, lancets, scissors, bone saws small and large, needle holders and needles. All well used and lovingly maintained so that the blades shone.
Hannah had had her first lessons in surgery from a Muslim doctor called Hakim Ibrahim, and she had never forgot the things he had taught her. His had been the first microscope she had ever seen, and from him she had learned the importance of cleanliness. She examined her nails now, and then scrubbed her hands and arms with water and lye soap at the washstand. Next to the basin Julia had put out a bottle of thirty-percent alcohol solution, as well as one that was marked Dist. Hamamelis Virginiana. She glanced at her over her shoulder.
“What’s this?”
“Paul insists,” Julia said. “It’s your doing, I think. You treated his hand when he cut it, and there was a wager?”