Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [96]
As Matthew shoveled ash into a tin scuttle, a few coals came to a dusty red life. Henri pushed them between the andirons with the poker, laid a splinter or two of kindling and three chunks of red oak. He crouched on his hands and knees and blew an orange flame up from the coals. When he sat back on his heels, Matthew was already leaving the room with the scuttle, transparently as a ghost might have done, and Mary Ann Forrest was looking at Henri with a small flicker of interest in her eyes.
Dites-moi, Henri, she said. Pourquoi est-ce vous qui m’apporte du bois ce matin?
Henri got to his feet as gracefully as he could manage. Parce que je voudrais vous servir, Madame.
The countrified flavor of her French, which she had probably acquired at some finishing school in Nashville, amused him a little. Of course his own would have sounded provincial in Paris. He wanted to hear her again in his tongue, but her next words to him were in English.
“You may be a colored man, Henri, but you are certainly no servant.”
“No ma’am. I have never been a servant, nor a slave.” He inclined his head. “But I would serve you all the same.”
“Then you are gallant.” She turned and took a step toward him, and he admired the smoothness of her movement, how her head floated above her shawled shoulders, like a vase delicately balanced there. The women of his own country acquired such grace by carrying water on their heads. Perhaps Mary Ann had circled the parlors of her school in the same manner, balancing a book instead of a jar. Her lips were redder than he remembered, but then her husband had just left her. Henri lowered his head and poked at the fire. It was unwise to look at a white woman directly for too long, most especially the wife of General Forrest.
“Ah.” She came nearer to him now, but only to spread her hands above the hearth. “Thank you—it is a grateful warmth.”
Henri seemed to feel the glow of her body as much as the heat of the freshening flames. That was no more circumspect than the other thing. He crouched and began to collect the sticks Matthew had scattered and set them into the old ham boiler where they were stored before burning.
“You are distinctly tidier than … your companion.”
“Matthew?” Henri said. “I didn’t know you would acknowledge him, even with your eyes.”
That part slipped out. Henri stopped his breath.
“Oh,” said Mary Ann, turning more tightly toward the fire. “That one may be better off if I don’t see him.”
Henri considered how this answer might be both wrong and right. No doubt it was a strictly truthful one, from her perspective. An admirable woman, Henri thought. He began to search his mind for a safe way of getting out of this room.
“Arise,” Mary Ann said. The hint of playfulness returned to her tone.
Henri stood up. “A votre service.” “Vous êtes sérieux?”
Their eyes met for a moment, before Henri looked down. “As serious as you,” he said. But he had seen she was not really playing.
“Well then.” She walked from the fireplace toward the window, dropping her hands and letting them float freely at her sides. “General Forrest is going to call upon General Bragg. To put it more plainly, he is going to pick a dangerous quarrel with him.”
“Madame, what would you?”
“I would have someone—” She caught her lower lip in her top teeth, then released it. Henri observed this action in the faint reflection of the sunlit windowpane. She turned toward him.
“Go with him, I suppose.”
“I’ve heard that Doctor Cowan means to go.”
“Yes, but Doctor Cowan can’t control him.”
A harsh, involuntary laugh barked out of Henri’s throat. “You know nobody can control him. And I … I can’t control anything. All I can do is watch.”
“Witness.” She had found his eyes again.
“Indeed, Madame, I have witnessed many things.” He looked away and so did she.
“Very well,” she told him. “Go witness this