Queen of Swords
Page 60

With her, Jennet had two of Mrs. Livingston’s servants, older negro women she hardly knew, whose names were Susan and Martha. Though they looked nothing like the women who had run the kitchen at Carryckcastle for all of Jennet’s girlhood, she sensed that these two were cut from the same mold: opinionated, steadfast, unflinching in an emergency, and able to exert their will almost effortlessly when it came to dealing with children or the infirm. Together the three of them would look after the lesser wounds, provide food and drink and a place to dry clothes and boots. Then the men they had cared for would go back to battle to be shot at again.
Jennet was stringing a rope across the room so they would have someplace out of the rain to hang wet clothes when she saw Martha, the younger and taller of the two servants, put down the brush she was using to scrub the table and look to the window, where Ben Savard could be seen speaking to a neighbor.
“Jean-Benoît,” Martha said, and her dark face split into an affectionate smile.
“My,” said Susan. “Look at the man.” And she clucked her tongue in admiration.
“Come to fetch the Redbone doctor,” said Martha.
Jennet took a deep breath, but before she could think of what to say, or if she should say anything, Ben Savard had come into the room. She got down from her stool to greet him, and realized that the door from the courtyard had opened, too. Henry Savard came in, with Hannah just behind him.
Since they had been in the city Hannah had worn the simple gray gown and sturdy shoes Julia provided, but today she had put those clothes aside. Now she wore a hunting shirt of felted wool dyed a deep red. The shirt was so long that it reached to her knees, and so wide that it hung in folds that had been cinched tight to her waist by means of a long red scarf. Two more scarves of the same color were looped loosely around her neck.
The fringed hem of the shirt touched the embroidered and beaded bands of high winter moccasins dyed a true deep red. Like the hunting shirt and the short cape that hung down Hannah’s back, the moccasins had been heavily embroidered. Across her chest she had strapped a leather bandolier with silver fittings; from it, a beaded sheath hung down over her left hip. The grip of a long knife faced forward so she could reach across and draw it easily.
In her hands she carried a wide-brimmed felt hat with a low crown, and slung on her back was a canvas pack.
Jennet knew exactly what was in that pack: an instrument case with scalpels and saws, the tools Hannah would need to amputate an arm or close a wound or draw out an arrowhead or shrapnel. There would be bandages and gauze, lint and plasters. A variety of needles in a flannel roll, heavy thread, laudanum, camphor, and alum to be used as a styptic. In a wooden case lined with felt were stoppered bottles of rectified spirits and brandy and Jesuits’ bark tea.
If Hannah must go to war, she would be prepared.
Jennet turned to Ben, who looked far too pleased with himself.
She said, “The clothes?”
“My mother’s.”
Henry provided the crucial detail. “Grand-mère Amélie,” he said. “She was a Seminole princess.”
“Of my eight great-grandparents, one was a Seminole princess,” said Ben.
“Oh, Amélie was a princess all right,” said Martha, who had never stopped smiling. “And don’t you look like one, too, in her things.”
Hannah managed only a short, tight smile. She said, “If we’re done discussing my wardrobe, I’m ready to go.”
“I wish I were ready to watch you go,” Jennet said dryly.
“It’s only six miles south of the city,” Hannah said. “I’ll be far from the fighting.”
“You’ll be right in the middle of it all,” Jennet said, her voice catching. “As you always are.” She turned to Ben Savard.
“If anything happens to her—”
There was a glittering in Ben’s eyes that made the color spark like turquoise. No tears, but pride and hope and love, and Jennet understood that those things would have to be promise enough.
It was half past three when they left the clinic. The first thing that struck Hannah was how empty the streets were. After so many weeks of crowds, it was unsettling.
“Jackson is reviewing the troops,” Ben said, reading the question from her face. “That’s where we’re headed.”
They trotted at an easy pace through the streets, catching sight now and then of a figure behind a window or on a balcony. There were no children to be seen anywhere, no young women walking, nobody in the cafés. But Hannah sensed them, the women with their children, the men too old to take part in this newest war. Waiting for the fighting to begin, so they could wait for it to end. Sitting in darkened parlors clutching carving knives, having handed even the most antique muskets over to the hundreds of men who had walked into the city to volunteer without weapons of any kind.
The air was cold on Hannah’s skin, and it felt good. The smell of rain was in the air, along with a faint tinge of gunpowder that settled on the tongue, a taste as familiar as salt. She felt no tension, but neither could she stop the jumble of questions her mind produced. She hoped that there would be some kind of shelter—a barn, a shed—any place with a roof and walls to cut out the winds and the worst of the wet. She didn’t like the idea of treating battle wounds out in the open in such weather, though she had done it more than once before.
“What are you thinking?”
She glanced at Ben. “How strange that it all comes back to me so easily. How it never gets easy.”