Queen of Swords
Page 47

There was a long silence, and then Hannah said, “That’s what you wanted to ask me, isn’t it? You want me to go west with you, to live in that place with the lawless and the runaways. To be a doctor and your woman and anything else that’s needed.”
He didn’t make excuses, or try to hide his feelings. “Yes. I thought—I think it could be a good place. For us. For you, and me.”
“No,” Hannah said, pulling her hands from his. “I’m not strong enough to go west again, not like that. Not even for you. And you don’t need to go, either.”
He was silent for a long moment. “They need my help.”
Hannah choked out a little cough. “They will die with or without you. Sooner or later the Americans will remember those thousands of acres and the timber and the game, and then they’ll come and they’ll show no mercy. You know that. You know it.”
“And between now and then,” Ben said. “They have a chance. We would have a chance.”
“I can’t,” Hannah almost moaned. “I can’t watch it all happen again. It would kill me this time. Please, don’t ask me.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, and then he nodded.
In the morning Hannah was stiff from sleeping perched on the edge of the narrow bed. Her joints ached and her face felt swollen, as though she been crying all night, though the pillow slip was dry.
Ben was dressing with his back to her, and the silence in the room was heavy. Hannah’s throat felt tight and hot, incapable of words. And what was there to say, really: He had asked her to go west, and she had given him the only possible answer.
Ben came to sit on the edge of the bed. He leaned over and kissed her, a soft kiss full of longing and affection. Against her mouth he said, “You are a wonder to me, Walks-Ahead.”
He got up and went to the table where he had laid out his weapons. Tomahawk and war club, a knife and a long rifle. Ammunition pouches, a patch box, a powder horn. Today or tomorrow or the day after he would find himself on a battlefield. While Hannah worked in the surgery, putting O’seronni soldiers to rights, he would be fighting with a company of Choctaw.
Hannah sat up, and held the blanket to her chest. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the sky outside the windows was lighter. There had been a frost; she could smell it in the air.
She said, “I’ll come with you, when you go into battle. To tend to the Choctaw under Juzan, and anyone else who asks me.”
He stopped and looked at her, his eyes moving over her face as if he might find some answer written there. She watched him consider, and then decide.
Ben nodded. “It may be later today, or early tomorrow.” He studied the floor for a moment. “I brought clothes for you.” With a swing of his head he indicated one of the two chairs in the room. There was a bundle there, tied with string.
“Thank you,” Hannah said.
“I’ll try to give you as much notice as possible, but you may not see me until it’s time to go.”
Hannah pushed out a sound that was meant to be an acknowledgment, or a question, or a request for help. She didn’t quite know herself what she hoped for. Even when Ben had gone and her heartbeat had quieted, she couldn’t put words to the ache in her belly.
The day passed, far more quickly than Hannah thought it would. She spent the morning in the surgery, again assisted by Julia and Jennet, and the afternoon in the little clinic.
She had expected that the afternoon would be as busy as or busier than the morning, and learned that she was wrong. There were only three people waiting for her. The first was Rattling-Gourd, the old Chickasaw chief who had explained to her the difference between white and black and red. She was surprised to see that he was still alive, and even more surprised that he had managed to get here at all.
He came into the clinic still wrapped in his blanket, now gaunt and stripped down to the bone by pain, hardly able to walk. With him he brought a granddaughter, whose swollen abdomen and sticklike arms and legs made a lengthy examination unnecessary. When Hannah asked her name, the girl looked at her as if she had never heard human language before.
The third patient was the young pregnant woman she had treated for swollen legs and ankles. She was pregnant still, but Hannah could see without being told that the child was dead in her belly.
“Make it come,” said the young woman, who gave her name as Helen. “Make it come out of me before I die. I have four other children; they will starve.”
Without Leo to run errands, Hannah had to leave the clinic to get what she needed, but first she put Rattling-Gourd in one cot and Helen in the other, and set out a pallet for the little girl. Then she went to the kitchen to ask Clémentine to send bread and soup. Finally she went to the apothecary, where she found Julia hard at work.
Hannah took down what she needed from the shelves: roots of black cohosh and goldenseal, borage, flaxseed. Julia, busy with the mortar and pestle, watched for a while as Hannah tied everything into a square of gauze that she would steep in hot water.
She said, “Overdue?”
“Dead in the womb.”
Julia nodded. “Will you need help?”
“I’m going to get Yellow-Sapling,” Hannah said. “If Rachel could sit with her while I’m gone—”
Julia nodded. “How long do you need?”
Hannah considered. “Send her in a half hour.”
Though it had been weeks since Hannah had visited the Indian village at the edge of the city, she remembered the way. She slipped through the crowds, staying clear of troop movements, keeping her head down and the hood of her boiled-wool cloak pulled low.