Queen of Swords

by Sara Donati

  “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” he said in his best local French.

  “No mistake,” said the stranger behind him, keeping to English. “Christian Wyndham, an officer in His Majesty’s forces on the North American continent. Turn around.”

  Kit forced his breathing to calm, and turned. The man who stood there was a stranger to him. Tall and broadly built. Mixed blood, mostly Indian. Shorn black hair, and eyes of a strange light color that looked almost silver against the dark skin. His own age, or a little younger.

  “Who are you?”

  There was a flicker of a smile that disappeared as soon as it came. “Jean-Benoît Savard.”

  Savard. Kit tried to make sense of it, to connect this man to the Dr. Savard of the clinic on the rue Dauphine.

  “He’s my half brother,” said the man.

  “You’re in the habit of reading minds?”

  “I can read yours. You’re wondering if you can get to that knife in your belt before I shoot. You can’t.”

  “Not at all,” lied Kit. “I was wondering why you are so certain you know me.”

  Savard inclined his head. “For a spy you are a very bad liar.”

  Kit considered the few options open to him. He said, “Very well, if you are so sure you know me, what are we waiting for? Let’s go to the Cabildo so we can resolve this misunderstanding. I have nothing to fear from the authorities.”

  Odd, how he almost believed himself, but Savard clearly did not. He wondered where the stabler was, if Savard had paid him to stay away.

  “Let’s get down to business,” Savard said. “What’s your interest in the Indian woman at the clinic?”

  Kit drew in a sharp breath, considered lying, and reconsidered. “She is a—was an acquaintance of mine. I heard that she was unwell.”

  “Is she one of your spies?”

  His tone was unremarkable, as if he had asked about the weather, or which tailor Kit frequented.

  “I haven’t spoken to Hannah or been in the same room with her for many months. If you’ve been watching me you know that.”

  “You still haven’t answered me directly. I suppose I will have to take you both to the Cabildo.”

  Kit felt his pulse leap like a startled bird. “So far as I know she is no spy.”

  The stern expression didn’t relax, but there was a flicker of something in the strange light eyes. “And Honoré Poiterin?”

  Kit blinked. “Who?”

  “The English are in trouble if you’re the best they have. You’ve broken into a sweat. Tell me about Poiterin.”

  “I know Poiterin,” Kit said.

  “He’s a friend?”

  Kit lifted a shoulder. “A social acquaintance.”

  “One of your network.”

  Silence seemed the only possible response. A long moment passed.

  “I’m curious,” said Savard. “That you seem to know nothing of the connection between Poiterin and the Bonners.”

  “Connection?” Kit’s mind raced, tried to link what he knew of Poiterin to the Scotts, and failed.

  “You haven’t heard any talk.”

  “No,” Kit said, letting his anger rise to the surface. “I don’t listen to women’s gossip, and the men I do business with hardly sit around discussing the affairs of an Indian woman. What is it you want, exactly?”

  “I want to know if you had any part in Poiterin’s attack on Hannah Bonner.”

  Kit was sure he had misunderstood, but saw by Savard’s expression that he hadn’t.

  “Poiterin? It was Poiterin who beat and raped her and left her for dead?”

  The words hung in the air, almost visible.

  Savard said, “You know he is capable of it.”

  Kit closed his eyes. Poiterin was one of the most valuable and volatile of his network, superbly placed and a source of excellent information, but unpredictable and prone to fits of rage. Kit had seen him shoot an expensive horse for nothing more than balking, and according to rumor he was guilty of far worse things. He had heard some of them over the last months. Smuggling, piracy, slave running—that Poiterin was a man of no loyalties and no morals was clear, but then Kit supposed that there were few saints who had ever taken up treason.

  A vague memory came to him of the journey that had brought him first to Barataria. Men deep in their cups, telling stories. Lafitte’s name had come up, and the men who had sworn him allegiance. Stories of Mac Stoker and his son, of Anne Bonnie and the old days, of rich merchantmen taken after hard battles, feuds and vendettas and stolen children.

  There had been some story about a child taken from a white woman as a souvenir, Kit remembered now. An infant taken home to a grandmother, as a man might take a string of pearls to a lover who needed to be wooed after too long an absence.

  “Was it Poiterin who took the boy to Pensacola?” The question had been asked before Kit could stop himself.

  Savard looked grimly satisfied. “Maybe you’re not as dumb as you seem at first. I’ll ask you straight out one last time. Have you taken any part in Poiterin’s campaign against the Bonners?”

  “I knew nothing about it.” And if I had known, Kit asked himself, what could I have done?

  “You know now. He’s a liability to you.”

  Kit met Savard’s sharp eyes. “You have a proposal for me.”

  Savard nodded.

  “And if I don’t accept your terms?”

  One shoulder lifted and fell. “I’d prefer to handle this myself.”

  Kit understood the man perfectly. He could agree to whatever he was going to suggest, or he could die right here. Savard wouldn’t risk taking him to the Cabildo for questioning, because Kit knew things about the Bonners that could easily be misconstrued in such anxious times.

  “Go on,” Kit said. “I’m listening.”

  It was Clémentine who first discovered Hannah’s removal to Ben’s two small rooms above the kitchen. As soon as the older woman realized that she couldn’t bully Hannah into moving back to the Savards’ more comfortable apartment above the clinic, she changed direction. Within an hour Ben Savard’s apartment had been transformed.

  Clémentine’s two daughters, silent in their work as their mother required of them, moved through the two small rooms like spirits. They tightened the bed ropes, replaced the mattress, and remade the bed with fresh linen that smelled of lilac water. A new cloth was spread over the table, dishware and a small tea service appeared on the rack on the wall, and new wax candles replaced the tallow ones that had suited Ben Savard well enough. All of this was done while Hannah sat near the hearth, half dozing in its warmth.

  Then the Savards came too. Julia brought her books and newspapers and the report that Jennet would be back tomorrow. Paul Savard insisted on examining her. With obvious reluctance he declared her well enough to be out of his immediate sight.

  Hannah said, “All this fuss. Whatever has got into Clémentine, do you think?”

  Dr. Savard looked at her closely. “It’s not just Clémentine,” he said. “They’ve taken your part.”

  “Who has taken my part?”

  He glanced toward the door. “Before the attack, they were watching you and keeping their distance. Now you’re one of them. You’ve got a common enemy.”

  He hadn’t answered Hannah’s question, and she said so. “You’re being very mysterious. It’s not like you.”

  “I’m being cautious. That’s very like me.” After a moment he said, “I believe you’ve met Clémentine’s mother. She’s called Maman Zuzu.”

  “Oh.” Hannah cleared her throat. “I see. I didn’t realize.”

  “Because they weren’t ready to trust you. Now they are.”

  It was hard to imagine that anyone might have suspected that Hannah was working with Honoré Poiterin, but that seemed to be what Dr. Savard meant. If that was true, she had paid a very high price to earn the trust of women like Clémentine and her mother. She might have asked more questions, had Luke not come in with n
ews of the grand review on the Place d’Armes.

  “More talk,” said Dr. Savard. “And crowds. If we don’t have an outbreak of yellow jack it will be a miracle of the first order. What of the speech? Did he do it, are we under martial law?”

  “Effective immediately.” Luke rubbed his eyes. He looked as though he had slept very little in the past days.

  “Will this make things more difficult for us? Should I be doing something?”

  “You should concentrate on getting better,” Luke said.

  In fact Hannah was feeling a little dizzy and very tired, and her eyes both ached and itched. She said, “Don’t go quite yet. Tell me what to expect. Dr. Savard, have you ever been in a city under martial law?”

  “No,” he said. “Though I’ve heard stories.”

  Luke studied the floor between his boots. He said, “For you and the clinic, and for us, there won’t be many changes. The city is closed off; you can’t get in or out without permission from headquarters. Every able-bodied man will be called into one kind of service or another. The courts have shut down, and business has pretty much come to a full stop. There’s a curfew for everybody now, as there always has been for the slaves.” He drew a piece of paper from his jacket. “Unless you’ve got a military pass. They’ll give you one,” he said to the doctor. “All medical people will get them.”

  Luke turned to Hannah. “Things are coming to a head. The British are on dry land and making advances. I expect we’ll see the first real confrontation within days, but with any luck not until after the Kentucky and Tennessee regiments get here.”

  Dr. Savard said, “Is it as bad as it looks?”

  Luke’s mouth pursed itself while he thought. “Yes.”

  Hannah closed her eyes. “I can’t get away from this war. It will never end.”

  “It will end,” Luke said quietly. “One way or the other. Listen, Savard, I need to raise the topic of evacuation with you. The women and children—”

  “Julia won’t have it,” said the doctor. “There’s no hope of her going. I’ll talk to her again about the children. What about your wife and son?”

  “Just as stubborn,” Luke said.

  Hannah said, “You could make her go, you know you could. You don’t want her to.”

  That struck home, she could see the discomfort of it in the way he looked away. Finally he said, “I’m following my instincts.”

  Hannah sat back. “Then I must trust your decision.”

  Later, when Hannah had gotten into bed, Clémentine herself appeared in the door with a tray and an expression that brooked no dissent. Clémentine had never been very forthcoming, and Hannah had never pushed, out of respect and also because of what Ben had told her—and she herself had seen—of the animosity between the Africans and the Indians in this part of the world. If Paul Savard said that Clémentine had changed her mind about Hannah, he must be believed, though her long face with its deep-set eyes showed no hint of approval as far as Hannah could see.

  And so Hannah ate the soup and the bread and drank the bitter tisane while Clémentine waited by the fire, darning stockings and keeping her thoughts to herself.

  At the door she paused. She said, “There’s a bell hanging right here. You ring it good and hard if there’s any trouble. I’ll hear it.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said.

  In the last moments before she fell asleep in the glow of the banked fire, she thought of Ben Savard, who had been away a long time.

  Chapter 43

  The room that served as a surgery was across the hall from the apothecary. Until now it had seldom been used; this was, in the first line, a kine-pox clinic, and only secondarily a charity hospital. Surgical cases were mostly referred elsewhere.

  There was a short row of chairs outside the surgery, all of them occupied. Some of the men talked quietly, some slept with their heads propped on the wall. A few were playing cards, and one was dictating a letter to Rachel. In this setting, the lighthearted girl who took such pleasure in parties and dinners was unrecognizable. Here she was her mother’s daughter, quiet, attentive, efficient. She glanced up at Hannah as she passed and gave her a grim smile.

  Julia was waiting inside the surgery. It was the lightest room in the house, with a bank of windows that looked out on the street, but the day was overcast and the lamps had been lit. In the middle of the room was a large table that might have once been in a kitchen. Julia had just finished scrubbing it, and her face was pink with exertion. She wore an apron that covered her from throat to toe, and her hair was tied with a large handkerchief.

  “I was hoping you’d be able to assist,” Hannah said.

  “We can call on Rachel, too, if we need her.” Julia used the back of her hand to wipe a stray hair from her cheek.

  Hannah took an apron for herself from a hook on the wall. She rolled up her sleeves and tied a large square of linen over her plaited hair, and then she stood for a long minute and studied the row of surgical instruments laid out neatly on a tray. A variety of surgical knives with down-turned points and wide spines, lancets, scissors, bone saws small and large, needle holders and needles. All well used and lovingly maintained so that the blades shone.

  Hannah had had her first lessons in surgery from a Muslim doctor called Hakim Ibrahim, and she had never forgot the things he had taught her. His had been the first microscope she had ever seen, and from him she had learned the importance of cleanliness. She examined her nails now, and then scrubbed her hands and arms with water and lye soap at the washstand. Next to the basin Julia had put out a bottle of thirty-percent alcohol solution, as well as one that was marked Dist. Hamamelis Virginiana. She glanced at her over her shoulder.

  “What’s this?”

  “Paul insists,” Julia said. “It’s your doing, I think. You treated his hand when he cut it, and there was a wager?”

  “Oh,” Hannah said, remembering. “Yes.”

  With a tone that was a little shy, Julia said, “When there is time, you might ask him about his experiments. He would like to show you his microscope.”

  Hannah said, “I’d like to see it.” And oddly, it was true. Her interest in medicine and science, which had been slumbering for so long, had sparked to life again. She thought of the laboratory she had inherited from another one of her teachers, empty and neglected these many long months. It was odd to think that they would be going home soon, really going home, to take up their lives. She found herself thinking of her father, and wondering if the letters she and Luke had sent off with Lieutenant Hodge on the Grasshopper had found their way home, of the letter Luke had sent from Pensacola. She thought of the last letter they had had, and Curiosity.

  “Hannah?” Julia said.

  “I’m ready.”

  There was a knock at the door and it opened.

  Jennet said, “Shall I bring in the first patient? A great hulk of a man from Kentucky, he tells me his name is Abraham and he’s got a bullet stuck in the meat of his shoulder that he’d like to be rid of.”

  Hannah couldn’t help but laugh. It was amazing, the way Jennet could bring light and warmth into the worst situation.

  “What have you done with the boy?”

  “Och, dinnae worry about wee Nathaniel. Clémentine fairly ripped him out of my arms when I said I wanted to come help.” Jennet took an apron as she spoke. “I’ll fetch Abraham, shall I? And we can get to work.”

  By the time the afternoon had slipped into dusk, it was clear to Hannah that she would never again operate so efficiently or well. With Julia and Jennet to assist they made short work of Abraham Finley’s bullet, and then went on to amputate toes, clean and drain an abscessed knife wound, and dig a dozen pieces of shrapnel out of a hand so horny with callus that it was like cutting through leather. Now the newest patient on the table had taken off his leggings to reveal an ulcer the size of a saucer that had eaten through muscle to the bone.

  Watching Julia handle instruments, Hannah had the idea that she could have done any of t
he surgeries on her own without hesitation. In contrast, Jennet had had only a few months of training, and cases like this one still caused her difficulty. Now she turned away momentarily. Hannah wouldn’t have blamed her if she had brought up her breakfast, the stench was that bad.

  When she turned back, Jennet fixed the patient with a stern gaze. “Mr. Corbin,” she said to him sharply. “Mr. Corbin, explain to me exactly how it is that you let yersel come to sic a pass. The Almichtie gave ye twa guid legs, man, and look what ye’ve done with the left one. Guid God, but that must pang ye.”

  Julia and Hannah exchanged glances, but didn’t try to intervene. When it came to dealing with the varied personalities of patients who happened to be soldiers, Jennet had no equal. Her instincts never failed; she knew when to be sympathetic, when to be distant, when a man needed most to be calmed or bullied, pacified or chided.

  Mr. Corbin had come into the surgery with a mutinous expression that at first seemed impervious to Jennet’s outrage. She went on anyway with her lecture, and Hannah, busy as she was with the mess that had once been the man’s calf muscle, had to admire his ability to tolerate more than one kind of pain.

  “What baw-heid walks three days on a shank like this?” Jennet demanded. “What use will ye be tae the major general if ye fall doon on yer gizz in the muck?”

  Finally Mr. Corbin opened his mouth to respond. Jennet’s head snapped up and she fixed him with her most severe expression.

  “So noo we’ll hear excuses, will we? A sairy tale, nae doot.”

  A momentary hesitation, and the small pale mouth shut. The two of them glared at each other for a moment and then, with a huff of a sigh, Mr. Corbin seemed to give up the idea of defending himself altogether.

  Jennet never lost track of what Hannah required from her, nor did she let up in her lecture. While she brought water and took away basins and handed instruments and bottles and salves she wondered out loud about the idiocy of men who hadn’t the sense that God gave a midge.

  It wasn’t until they were almost finished that Hannah realized that the unfortunate Mr. Corbin had lost consciousness, but that he had done so with a vague smile on his face.