Queen of Swords
Page 76

“I take it your parents don’t know you’re here.”
“I was hoping—”
“To hide the injury, I see.”
“They would forbid me to go again. Is my leg very bad?”
She winced as Hannah removed gravel from the long graze on her shin.
“Your stockings are beyond repair,” Hannah said dryly. “But the rest of you will recover. You will have to stay off your feet with your knee elevated for at least a week, until the swelling goes down. What you tell your family about how you came to hurt yourself is your own affair.”
Mlle. Girot was so relieved that she hardly twitched while Hannah cleaned and bound her injuries. Throughout the entire operation she told what she knew of the battle.
“The British underestimate our soldiers time and again,” said Mlle. Girot in a tone that Hannah suspected echoed her father’s. “They push forward into the face of the artillery and then seem surprised when they drop by the dozens. Soon they will give up and go away.”
“Or bring in bigger guns,” Hannah said.
Mlle. Girot’s head tilted to one side as she considered this idea. She seemed to be looking for a counterargument, and when she could produce none, she subsided into uneasy silence that lasted until Hannah was almost finished.
Finally she said, “You have attended soldiers in other battles?”
Hannah glanced at her. “Yes. Many times.”
“It is hard to imagine, the things you must see and do. Do you think it is harder for you than it is for a man?”
“There’s nothing easy about it,” Hannah said. “For anyone.”
Chapter 57
It was almost eleven before the men came home. They were tired and subdued, but among them they had only minor wounds: a powder burn, a cut on the back of the hand, a broken toe.
And they were hungry, the best of signs, in Hannah’s experience.
The adults sat together around the Savards’ table and talked. It fell mostly to Luke to tell the day’s story, with comments now and then from Nathaniel. Ben was unusually quiet, and Hannah watched him with growing unease.
“They’re still hauling guns,” said Luke. “Sixty miles over water and through swamp. Pakenham won’t really make a move until he’s satisfied with his artillery.”
“They are taking a long time,” Julia said.
“That’s the English,” Nathaniel said. “They stop and ruminate on the smallest details when it’s time to jump—”
“—and rush ahead when they’d do better to stop and think,” finished Luke for him.
“Aye,” said Nathaniel. “It’s bred in the bone.”
“And you, married to an English lady,” Jennet said, trying to strike a lighter tone and not quite succeeding.
“There are exceptions to every rule,” observed Julia.
“The English have been fighting the same way since they first came to this continent,” Runs-from-Bears said. There was no disapproval in his tone, nothing of disgust; it was an observation that a man made of his enemy and then put to good use.
“It worked for them with Napoleon,” said Paul Savard.
“That’s the problem,” Nathaniel said. “They can’t adapt, and worse still, they’ve got too many war chiefs. The one that got here on Christmas Day, that Pakenham, he’s afraid to stand up to the others, what are they called? Keane, and Cochrane.”
Hannah saw Paul and Julia exchange glances. They were wondering how Nathaniel Bonner would have such detailed information. Hannah hoped they wouldn’t ask, because she didn’t particularly want to hear the details of the risks the men took day by day.
She was sitting next to Ben, and his hand settled on her knee. No doubt her expression was as easy to read as Julia’s.
Ben said, “Kit Wyndham is in the fighting.”
Jennet dropped her fork with a clatter. “You saw him?”
“We did,” said Luke.
“Could have shot him right between the eyes,” said Nathaniel. “But it would have made things mighty hot for us.”
“That would have been distinctly unsporting,” Jennet said. “Wyndham may be fighting for the other side, but he was a help to us. Why do you look at me like that, Luke; you have said so yourself.”
Luke shrugged. “A man takes a stand, and lives with the consequences.”
Jennet was looking at Hannah as if she wanted her support in this argument, but Hannah could not contradict her brother, for the simple reason that he was right.
“What I’d like to do,” Luke said, “is ask the man a few questions. Such as, how he came to write that confession. Any thoughts on that, Ben?”
Every face turned to Ben Savard, whose expression gave nothing away. It was a question that Hannah had been wanting to ask him, but thus far she hadn’t found the right combination of words and courage.
Ben speared a piece of fish out of the stew, and turned his steady gaze to Luke.
“What is it you think I did?”
Luke shrugged. “I expect you caught him unawares and held a gun to his head, and he wrote down what you told him to write.”
“Every word of it true,” Jennet interjected.
Luke went on without acknowledging the interruption. “What I don’t know, is whether it worked out the way you had in mind.”
Hannah watched her father following this conversation, his interest so keen that she could almost hear it humming.