Queen of Swords
Page 80

“Is he.” Hannah’s voice sounded strained to her own ear.
“Some smarter,” agreed Runs-from-Bears. “He’s got you tied up in knots, and you never even saw the rope coming.”
Hannah got up and walked across the room and back again. Sat down and stood, crossed her arms and then sat again. Her father and uncle watched her impassively. They would wait all night if she made them.
“So you’re saying I should marry Ben Savard.”
“That would be the sensible thing to do,” said Nathaniel. “As attached as you are to the man, and he to you.”
“You don’t want me to come home with you. You want me to live here.”
“Hell, no,” Nathaniel Bonner said. “That’s not the idea at all. We’d hog-tie you and cart you home on a mule if need be.”
“Gag you, too, if it came to that,” said Runs-from-Bears.
“Then I don’t understand,” Hannah said. Her hands were trembling, and she wound them together.
“You see?” her father said to her uncle. “It’s a wonder how a smart woman can be pure blind at times.” He turned back to her. “You cain’t stay here, and he doesn’t have to, either. You bring him on home with you to Paradise.”
Hannah took a deep breath. “This is his home. This is everything he knows. What makes you think he would leave here?”
Bears said, “What makes you think he wouldn’t?”
Her father said, “Have you ever asked the man?”
Hannah drew in a sharp breath and held it.
“She’s never asked him,” Bears said to no one in particular. He shook his head in disbelief.
Nathaniel Bonner stood. “Time to get some sleep. You think about asking Ben Savard to come north, will you?”
“You want me to ask Ben to marry me.”
Her father raised a brow. “You’re a Kahnyen’kehàka of the Wolf Longhouse. You pick your own husband and do the asking.”
“This is Louisiana,” said Hannah. And: “I wouldn’t know how to ask.”
“You’ll figure it out,” her father said. “Your stepmother managed when she asked me, and she had more than a little to do with raising you.”
Before he went through the door, Hannah put a hand on her uncle’s arm. She said, “He might say no.”
That earned her a gruff laugh. “I guess you don’t see what you do to the man.”
“But he might,” Hannah insisted. “He might say no.”
Her father winked at her. “We got plenty of rope,” he said. “And I’m right good at knots myself.”
Chapter 60
Honoré Poiterin wakes gasping in the cold night air, fumbling for flint and striker and candle.
The small light hauls him from the dream world back into the realm of the living. Slowly his breathing comes back to normal, sweat dries on his brow, and he becomes aware of his physical self: the itch in his eyes, his tongue, the palms of his hands. The misery of the rash that covers his face and neck.
Every day he is more reluctant to move from the bed, terrified of dreams, afraid to look out the window for fear of who he’ll see there, staring up at him. The boundary between the living and the dead has thinned to the consistency of gauze.
When he mentions this to Noelle she doesn’t laugh or call him names. Instead she looks thoughtful, and stands staring out the window herself for a long minute. Honoré’s throat constricts in fear. She’ll turn now and tell him that he’s absolutely right: The dead do walk the streets.
He thinks now and then about the priest who came into this room to marry them. His friends would convulse with laughter if they knew that Honoré Poiterin is longing for a priest. But he imagines that a priest might be able to set his world right again. He would gladly pray a hundred rosaries, if it rid him of the dead. Certainly it seems that Noelle doesn’t know what to do for him.
She says, “You’ll be better once you can get out in the daylight. It’s the drink, and too much thinking.”
It’s true that his mind never seems to shut off. If he drinks himself into oblivion, the memories fill his dreams and mix together with the visits from the dead. There is simply no escape.
On the seventh of January something changes. He wakes to the smell of good coffee, burnt sugar and cinnamon, a fire of seasoned wood. The air is as sweet as his mouth is sour. Honoré opens his eyes and watches as Noelle picks up the room, her movements quick and efficient. There is a fresh white linen cloth on the table where she has laid out his breakfast.
She says, “There is water beside you.”
He drinks until his throat stops hurting and his tongue unglues itself from the roof of his mouth. Then he allows himself to be helped out of bed and into the hip bath, where she cares for him as if he were an infant. Finally she shaves him, and helps him into clean clothes, and then there is breakfast.
Honoré considers asking about his brandy bottle, but he is unsettled by Noelle’s easy smile, her odd mood. What have you done with the harridan, my wife? He keeps himself from asking the question aloud. Instead he lets her pour him more coffee and hot milk.
While she makes the bed and moves around the room, he tries to sort it all out.
“Is the war over?” he asks finally. “Have the British taken the city?”
She pauses in folding a blanket and then comes to sit across from him.
“No,” she says. “I am afraid that things don’t look good for the English.”