Shadowbrook Part 52

In the morning Quent woke to the sound of Sally Robin's voice. He ran down the stairs knowing what it was had summoned her song even before he saw her standing in the door of Lorene's room. Quent pushed past her. Lorene lay on her bed. She looked peaceful. John was sprawled in a chair beside the fire. His legs were on the edge of the hearth, his head lolling sideways. He might have been asleep, or in a drunken stupor, but Quent knew he was dead.

Sally Robin's song ended and she came into the room. There was a decanter of brandy on the table beside Lorene's bed, and an empty blue bottle. "What is that?" Quent demanded when she picked it up and put it in the deep pocket of her ap.r.o.n.

"Only a potion I made for the mistress. Something as would help rest her when the pain got too bad. She was dying, Master Quent. Sooner or later, that don't make much nevermind."

He looked at his brother. "John..."

"He be dying too. We all is, you know that."

"But here, like this. I-"

"Let it be, Master Quent. Your mama, if she was here, she tell you to let it be."

The double funeral took place at Squirrel Oaks the following day. They buried Lorene next to Ephraim. Pohantis was some distance away, but across from them both. John's grave was beside those of his six dead brothers and sisters. Quent had decided not to wait for a minister from Albany, so he read from the Bible himself, and Sally Robin sang.

"My go-to-heaven song, that be," she told him afterward. "It be peaceful where she is, never you mind about that."

"And John?"

"I don't know, Master Quent. And you don't neither. Your mama, she didn't want you to worry overly 'bout your brother John."

He'd always known that was true. He simply hadn't realized how much.

The slaves stood on one side of the burial ground, the tenants on the other. Ely Davidson was there with his new wife, and all the Frankels. Tim was still not married, but Ellie had a second husband. She was Ellie Frankel Bleecker Hodges now. Larky Hodges was a boot maker, a skill not before in good supply on the Patent, so Lorene had been well pleased by the union. Ellie's stomach stuck out so far Quent had to stand to the side of her to accept her condolences. "We're gonna miss her a lot, Quent. I swear I don't know what the Patent will do without her." Then, the question that was on everyone's mind: "You plannin' on staying?"

"I'm staying, Ellie." He spoke up loud enough so pretty much everyone could hear. The collective release of tension was almost a physical thing. "I'll have to go away one more time. For a month, maybe, in the spring." Whatever happened, he must be at Bishkek's second funeral. "But I'm master of the Patent now. Shadowbrook will be the same as always. For everyone."

Some things would be different, however. Quent walked over to the young Ashanti who worked in the stable. "You're the one they call Tall Boy?"

"That be me, master."

"What's your real name? What did they call you back in Africa?"

"White people no be saying my name, master. Tall Boy, that be fine."

"Try me," Quent said. The slave hesitated. "A direct question deserves an answer. What's your African name?"

"Ajibwamemelosu."

Quent smiled. "It's a lot to say, I'll grant you that. Will it be all right if we call you Ajib?"

In five years, since the net had dropped over him when the slavers raided his village, no one had asked Ajibwamemelosu's permission for anything. "Ajib be fine," he said. "I be mighty pleased you call me Ajib."

Two days after Lorene and John were in the ground Nicole's fever broke. She opened her eyes. "Ma Mere, je voudrais-" Then saw the black woman leaning over her and remembered. She was no longer a nun; G.o.d had rejected her. "You're Sally Robin, aren't you? The one who sings those incredibly lovely songs."

"I sing some, that be the truth, Little Mistress."

Nicole wanted to ask why Sally called her that, but she had more urgent needs. "Please, I'm so thirsty."

"I 'spected that. Got some nice stuff brewed up for you right here." Sally Robin held a mug of lukewarm tea to Nicole's lips, brewed of bark and flowerbuds and sweetened with honey.

"Thank you," Nicole murmured. "I think I want to sleep now. Could you sing me a song, Sally Robin?"

"Special rest-easy-and-get-well song," Sally promised. She was only partway through it when Quent came and stood in the doorway behind her.

He waited for the song to end before he spoke. "How is she?"

"Very tired, Master Quent. But Little Mistress, she be fighting a big fight with the poison in her, and she won. She sleepin' natural now. That be a good thing."

He came and stood by the bed. "Do you all call her Little Mistress?"

"Yes."

"Whose idea was that?"

"Can't rightly say. Now you go away and be patient, Master Quent Soon as Little Mistress be able, I be calling you to come."

The next day he was summoned to her bedside. "Nicole, I'm so happy to see you like this." They'd put a mobcap over her shorn hair, and dressed her in a fresh white linen nightdress. She smelled of lilacs, not sickness. Quent reached for her hand. "Sally Robin says you're going to get well."

She did not pull away from him, but her hand lay motionless in his. "I am very grateful to you. And to Sally Robin. More grateful than I can ever say. I will pray for you both every day."

They were alone, and he leaned closer and grinned at her. "I'm glad of your sweet prayers, precious heart, but don't expect me to be satisfied with only them. I'll show you other ways to thank me, soon as you're well enough."

Nicole turned her head away and didn't answer.

It was pretty much the same every time he visited. Eventually she was well enough to be carried to a chair beside the window, and by the first week of the new year she was taking a few tentative steps, leaning on the furniture or on someone's arm-Sally Robin's or Taba's, or even his own, but always she was as distant as she'd been that first day. Quent brought her two canes he had made from elmwood. "I think they are the right size. I measured while you were sleeping."

The sticks were beautifully carved and rounded and smoothed by his own hands, as he'd done with the boards he'd brought to build the place above the waterfall in Shoshanaya's glen. "Thank you. I'm very grateful for everything."

"For the love of Almighty G.o.d, Nicole, it's not grat.i.tude I want. I love you. I think you love me. Despite everything, I still believe that. In Shoshanaya's glen, you wanted-" The look she gave him was so stricken he broke off. "You did," he murmured. "I know you did."

"I was breaking my vow. All those people died because of it."

"But you kept your vow. The abbess said you had. I heard her. You kept your vow and now G.o.d has sent you back to me."

"I wish I could believe that," she whispered. "I cannot. Go away, please."

Weeks went by. He visited her at least once a day, but he never saw her smile. In April, when the snow was mostly gone but the ground was still frozen and there was not yet any sign of spring, he went into her room at midday but found her gone. Stricken with sudden terror, Quent tore through the house yelling Sally Robin's name.

"I be right here, Master Quent. What you be wanting of old Sally?"

"I can't find Nicole. Little Mistress, Sally. Where is she?"

"She be wanting to visit your mama's grave, master. Little George, he fix her a horse and she go off a little past breakfast time."

"A horse? I had no idea she was well enough to ride."

"Little Mistress be well enough to do mostly whatever she wants now. On the outside, master, that lady, she be nearly entirely well."

"Then why-"

"That lady she don't be feeling herself part of this world, Master Quent. Little Mistress, she be between this world and the next."

"Can you sing her back, Sally Robin?"

"I be trying, but my song don't be big enough. Little Mistress, she be so busy looking into the beyond-after, she ain't got no time for the now-here. You got to find some way make that little lady know she got her feet solid on the good earth, Master Quent. Sally Robin done all she can. Up to you now."

Quent saddled a horse of his own and galloped off toward Squirrel Oaks. He had an insane fear that she had secretly left the Patent, and that he'd never see her again, but he was still half a league away from the burial ground when he saw her standing on the cemetery hill, silhouetted against the afternoon sky. "Nicole!" He screamed her name into the wind. "Nicole!"

She turned and waited for him, unmoving. He rode up beside her, then slid out of the saddle.

"I wanted to pay my last respects to Madame Hale. I am very sorry I was not well enough to attend the funeral. I brought her the first forsythia of the season. You can make them flower early if you cut them and-"

Quent pulled her to him and stopped her words with his mouth. Nicole stood rigid in his arms. "You love me," he said finally. "I know it."

"I do, I have never denied that. I always will love you."

"Then why-"

"I am not free to love you or any man. I took a vow."

"And kept it. But-"

She reached up and put a finger over his lips. "I will make you a bargain, Mons-Quent. I know the Patent needs a mistress. I will be that, but I can never be your wife."

Jesus G.o.d Almighty, a devil's bargain. How could he agree to such an unnatural covenant? If he did not, she would leave. "Very well. But-" The idea was born full in him without his having examined any of it's parts. "Nicole, I saved your life, didn't I? Bringing you here so Sally Robin could look after you, isn't that why you're still alive and walking on both your legs?"

"Yes, and I will always pray for you."

"I want something more than your prayers. I want you to make me a promise. In June I will go to Singing Snow."

"The Potawatomi village where you and Monsieur Shea were-"

"That's right. I want you to come with me. Give me your word, Nicole. You owe me that. Give me your word that you'll come." You got to find some way make that little lady know she got her feet solid on the good earth, Master Quent.

"Very well," she said. "You have my word."

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

MUCH FAT MOON, THE FIFTH SUN THE VILLAGE OF SINGING SNOW.

"HAYA, HAYA, JAYEK." Every member of the village stood in a circle, arms linked. The whitened skeletons in the open pit were tumbled together. Bishkek's bones had been placed on the heap only minutes before, but Quent could no longer tell which ones belonged to his manhood father. "Haya, haya, jayek" So, so, all of us together. The rhythm of the chant owned him. He was no longer aware of Corm, standing beside him, or of Nicole a short distance away.

When the burial of the bones was completed, he came back to earth enough to see how solemn she looked. The ceremony had dearly moved her. "It must be very strange to you," he said.

"Not as strange as I expected." She had become so accustomed to seeing him dressed as the master of the Patent she had forgotten how broad his naked chest was.

"I don't understand."

"It is pagan and heathen, at least that's what I'm supposed to believe. But it was ..." She searched a moment for the word. "It was holy. I am sure it was of G.o.d."

"It makes me happy for you to see that."

Nicole smiled at him for the first time in all the months since Quebec. "I am sure I look even stranger to everyone here than they do to me." She had on the same simple gray frock and white mobcap she wore at Shadowbrook. "Never mind, we shall become accustomed to each other. What happens next?"

"I need to speak with Corm. Las.h.i.+ will look after you. Later there will be a feast."

"They aren't going to do it. There are thousands of redcoats all over Canada-Quebec, Trois Rivieres, Montreal crawl with soldiers. But every French white still alive is right where he's always been."

Quent wanted to hold out some hope, but he'd never lied to Corm and he wasn't about to start now. "Pitt wrote to me. He reminded me that he'd only ever said he'd try. He faces huge opposition in the government. Despite all he's done, there are plenty who want to be rid of him."

Corm leaned over and spat on the ground. It was an entirely Indian way of saying what he thought. "Pontiac agreed to try as well. But he succeeded and Pitt failed."

"It's not over yet," Quent said. "Maybe things will still-"

"Jeffrey Amherst hates every red man he sees, and he has garrisons to sustain from Carolina to Quebec. He does it by offering a bounty to any as poach game in Anis.h.i.+nabeg hunting grounds. As long as Amherst's in charge, it's over."

Quent wanted to disagree, but he could not. "It will be enormously difficult for them to leave Amherst in charge. The battalions were never up to strength. Now, with deaths and casualties and plain old desertions ... He grows weaker, Corm. He has to."

Cormac looked at him. "Do you really think so?"

"I do. He's trying to recruit local lads, of course, but you know that seldom produces much."

"Not in the colonial character, soldiering?"

"Not in the English fas.h.i.+on. Not blind obedience to standing still and being shot at when there's a whole forest ready to offer shelter. And not doing things for fear of the lash and the noose." He put his hand on Corm's shoulder. "I know how discouraged you are. I can't blame you. But could be things are going to change now. Maybe just in ways we didn't expect."

"Change, yes. But not for the Anis.h.i.+nabeg. At least not the kind they were hoping for."

"You can't be-"

Corm held up his hand. His disappointment was too bitter for this day in this place. It would poison their last visit with the spirit of Bishkek "Let's talk about something else. Nicole looks fine. Pretty as ever."

"She is that."

"But?"

"She wants no part of me. Still says she's bound to her vow to be a nun."

"Crazy," Corm said. Then Shabnokis came, beating her drum and announcing the beginning of the feast.

Nicole came shyly out of Las.h.i.+'s wickiup. She was dressed in a squaw's buckskins, leggings and a short dress, and her hair was plaited, the braid hanging over one shoulder and finished with a cl.u.s.ter of bright-colored feathers.