Cold Steel

To the tall girl she said, “Bintou, fetch some of that broth we were brought this morning.”

To the short girl she said, “Sit down, Wasa. You will need your strength later.”

To me she said, “Bad enough you use his name, but I suppose your ways may be different.”

“What am I supposed to call him if not by his name?”

“A woman does not call her husband by his name. After her first child is born, she may address him by the eldest child’s name, as I did my husband, as ‘Andevai’s father.’ Despite your ignorance in such matters, I can see you have an idea how to handle him. I must warn you that his father and grandmother spoiled him.”

“Did they?” I ventured.

Her frown was daunting! “It is so easy for good-looking boys to be ruined by praise. It has taken all my effort to make sure he has learned proper manners. You must resist any inclination to let him have his way in things beyond what a man has a right to ask for, cooking and children.”

This hard speech did not upset me. Indeed, I found it enlightening. I stirred, wishing I dared sit up. “Maestra, I beg you, please lie down, for you are looking exhausted. Bintou, please bring your mother some of that hot broth, for I hope it will soothe her lungs.”

The grim line of her lips softened. The ghost of a younger, healthier woman danced briefly in her face, then vanished, but it was the way she carried herself that caught the eye. All this time I had been thinking that Vai’s pride came from his close study of the mansa.

Bintou brought her mother broth, then settled her on a cot. Meanwhile Wasa took my hand in the familiar manner of a little sister, tracing my fingers with her own. As her mother’s harsh breathing gentled to sleep, the girl spoke.

“Was he really going to kiss you right in front of Maa?”

I met her gaze gravely. “I think he was.”

She leaned closer with a smirk on that seemingly innocent little face. Her fingers crept up my arm. “He likes you.”

I grabbed her ear with my uninjured hand. “He does like me. What do you really want?”

“The locket.”

“You can’t have it. My father gave it to me.”

“I never met my papa. He died while my mama was big with us.”

“I’m sorry about that. I lost my father when I was six. I might let you look at it later if you’re very good.” I released her ear. “Where is my cane? And the basket?”

“No one can touch the cane. It bites. Also, there is a skull in that basket. I looked, even though Bintou told me not to. Then it talked to me.” She eyed me. “Do you believe me?”

“It would depend on what the skull said to you. Then I would know for sure.”

“She spoke like a foreign person. She was hard to understand. I think she asked me to tell her who I was and why I was staring at her so rudely.”

Hard to say if Wasa had a gift or was just exceedingly quick-witted. “If you are very well behaved, I will introduce you to her.”

She glanced at her sleeping mother. “I am always well behaved. Or at least, I am when Maa is awake.”

I smiled as she sat back to allow Bintou to bring a cup of broth. I sat up with a bolster propped behind me and handled the cup with my uninjured arm. Afterward, with my right side held motionless along a rolled-up blanket, I was able to doze.

Later I heard the girls whispering in the village dialect, and their mother scolding them.

“They will despise us no matter what we do. But we will give no cause for scorn by speaking like uneducated people. Recite to me from the primer.”

Pronounced with careful enunciation in the sweet, high voices of the girls, the simple, rhyming phrases spun me down into sleep.

Candle flame is candle bright.

Can you quench the candlelight?

At dawn the entire camp was taken down. My skirt and petticoat were dirty but wearable. The lovely cuirassier’s jacket was a loss. An ill-fitting and homespun wool tunic replaced it, although I had Bintou salvage the jacket in case I could repair it.

We traveled in the bed of a wagon. The jostling caused me so much pain that it was all I could do not to sob the entire weary day and the next and the next. I became feverish as the wound throbbed. Not a word of complaint passed the lips of Vai’s mother, although her cough got worse, shaking her entire frame, and sometimes she went gray as she struggled to suck in a breath of air. At night Bintou dosed her with a syrup that drugged her into a stuporous slumber.

Days passed. We slept in the hospital tent, in servants’ quarters, in stables, always under guard. Of Vai I saw no sign, but the locket’s warmth told me he lived. With what tendrils of thought still remained to me, I imagined we were returning to Four Moons House. Instead we came to rest at last in a locked room with a hypocaust floor. Wood-barred windows overlooked a walled courtyard past which I heard the sounds of city life. The room had four rope beds and a table and bench. Wasa set the cacica’s skull on the table, as she had started doing at every stop on the way, careful to ornament her with a flower or bit of greenery.