Queen of Swords
Page 46

“I’ll tell it,” said Dr. Savard, throwing a look at his stepdaughter that was partial amusement and a greater part pride. “Rachel has had an invitation to spend a season in Manhattan in her uncle’s household.”
The girl’s face shone to hear those words spoken out loud. Her joy was so overwhelming that Hannah could hardly look at her.
Henry, who had been scowling at his plate, looked at Hannah. “She’ll find somebody to marry there and never come back home again.”
“Nothing in this world is certain,” said his mother in a calm tone. “But at this moment we are all in good health, and your sister is very happy. Won’t you be pleased for her?”
“No,” said Henry shortly. “Not if she’s going away.”
“You’ll go to your room to think about that,” said Henry’s father. “And come back when you’re prepared to be kind to your sister, and conduct yourself reasonably at table.”
“Reasonable,” Henry said, with all the dignity he could muster, “is a word grown-ups use when they can’t make you agree with them.”
Later, alone in Ben’s apartment, Hannah sat down heavily on the bed in the empty room.
Reasonable is the word you use when you can’t get somebody to agree with you.
Laughing, she lay down and fell asleep watching her breath make white clouds in the air.
Late in the night Ben came, and leaning over her where she slept, said her name.
Hannah woke immediately. In the light of the candle he carried his expression was severe, his eyes shadowed.
“Have you changed your mind? I can find a bed elsewhere.”
“I haven’t changed my mind.”
She moved to the far side of the narrow bed and then watched as he undressed. He seemed far away in his thoughts, almost unaware of her. Certainly unconcerned that she watched him as his clothes fell to the floor. He pulled his hunting shirt over his head, arms crossed and elbows pointed at the ceiling so that his muscles jumped into stark relief. His skin was the color of old honey, the hair that feathered across his chest and abdomen dark. There was a new scar on his right side, short but wide, and new enough to still be bright pink.
Hannah said, “Did you stitch that yourself?”
He looked down in surprise, as if he had forgot about a wound that might have killed him. With the flat of his hand he covered it briefly and then glanced at her with a grin.
“Surprised I know how to use a needle?”
“Not in the least,” Hannah said. “I’m sure you are very handy. But you didn’t stitch that yourself; the angle is all wrong.”
“Is it?” He came and sat down on the edge of the bed. The air was very cold and his skin had risen in bumps all over his arms and back. Hannah could have held up the covers for him, but somehow it seemed too much work just at this moment.
He said, “A woman on the Sabine River did it for me.” And then, when it was clear she wouldn’t ask, he said: “I want to tell you about where I was. Do you want to hear?”
Hannah held out the blanket. “Come,” she said. “Tell your story.”
Jennet was one kind of storyteller, and Ben was another. Jennet used her hands and body and voice, like the actors in the play Hannah had seen at the Park Place theater in Manhattan. Ben went still while he talked, and let his voice create a bubble, and inside the bubble, a world.
He told her about a place called the Disputed Lands, a day’s ride to the west. Five thousand square miles, the Calcasieu River on the east, the Sabine on the west. An old Caddo Indian village on the north, and the Gulf on the south. Ciprière, canebrake, savannahs, a hundred kinds of water, a thousand kinds of birds and game. Hills covered with yellow pine as far as the eye could see. White oak in the river bottoms, cypress trees five hundred years old.
Mexico claimed it and so did the Americans, but both countries were wound up in other, bigger wars. They agreed to disagree. They called those five thousand square miles neutral territory, but there was nothing neutral about them. Both sides retreated: no troops, no law, and so the lawless moved in.
“The worst of the worst,” Ben said. “Men with no footing in the world.”
Men who robbed and murdered and raped. Slave-runners determined to ply their trade even after the laws were passed to stop them. And runaway slaves who banded together, determined to survive.
Hannah sat up so suddenly that the room swam a little. Ben was looking at her, cautious, waiting.
She said, “Red Rock.”
His hands grasped her forearms and he brought her back down. Ben held her like that, calmly, until her heart regained its normal rhythm.
“Red Rock.”
“Yes, Red Rock. Before slavery was outlawed in New-York State, the runaways would go north to Canada, but some of them stayed in the endless forests. Friends of ours—” Her voice wobbled, thinking of Curiosity Freeman, of her son Almanzo. Here they would be called free people of color.
“It ended badly,” she said. “The whites won’t let them be, you know. It always ends badly.”
He was lying on his side, his hands still on her forearms. There was nothing sexual about the way he touched her, which was right and good, and still it made her ache in an unexpected way.
Ben said, “Does that mean they shouldn’t try?”
There was something in his tone of disappointment. He had expected a different reaction.
“I couldn’t bear it,” Hannah said. “I couldn’t bear to see it happen again.”