The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [108]
“Besides the two of us, you mean? Then blame the mala-kim, for in the end it was their wish we fulfilled. Quite the opposite of what the legends say—we are their djinni, not they ours. As for me, I cannot fool myself. My silly curiosity and girlish game of secrecy ruined the world.”
“Ah, God!” Franklin collapsed into the chair, hands clenching and unclenching. “How can you be so —” He was going to say “calm” and “remorseless,” but then he met her gaze again, and her misery struck him like an ocean wave, clogging his throat and stinging his eyes and cold, so cold he shivered. It struck him dumb, and he realized that there was nothing mysterious about this woman at all. He understood her to the core, had since the instant he saw her—and then locked that knowledge away, because to face Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil, he had to face himself, and he had avoided that for many years.
“I hope,” he managed, when he could again form words not too sawn at the edges to be understood, “that you have some purpose in reminding me of all of this.”
“I do. I want you to share penance with me. I want you to help me make things right.”
“That's what I'm trying to do, with your friend Vasilisa, and Red Shoes, and your students.”
“I do not trust Vasilisa or the Indian. Do you?”
He hesitated. “No, I don't. There is something in their purpose that feels … odd. I keep dismissing it.”
“As you dismissed any suspicions that you might be helping the wrong people, those years ago in Boston?”
“Now that you mention it. But—forgive me—why should I trust you? Or you me?”
“Because we are damned by the same love, the same mistake, the same sin. I trust you because we crave the same redemption.”
He frowned. “What if this is all a lie? You could have learned anything you just told me from Vasilisa.”
“You know it isn't a lie,” she said.
And, of course, he did.
So he dragged the words out of himself. “Where do we start, then?”
“We start with a story,” Adrienne said. “It's about my hand …”
Oglethorpe listened for a moment to the cannon fire in the distance. The inhabitants of the Taensa village heard it, too, and the women began packing up what few possessions they valued enough to take with them. A small knot of old men sat around the fire chanting—whether merely singing a song or working at some magic, he had no idea.
The cannon boomed again. “That'll be the German company,” he said. “I had a report an hour ago that they were on hand to engage the enemy as they unloaded their ships. I think we shall have a hot breakfast, my friends—powder and ball.”
“Thank God and Benjamin Franklin we have those Swedenborgian airships,” Nairne said. “At least now we see how the country lies.” He poured each man at the table a glass of Madeira, then raised his own. “To our wizard, Benjamin Franklin!”
They clinked glasses and drank, the five of them— Oglethorpe; Nairne; and their majesties Philippe, Charles, and Peter. The latter two hesitated before touching their glasses, but Charles completed the motion.
“I also had word from Unoka,” Oglethorpe went on. “He and the Choctaw worked their way north to devil them from the rear. Less than fifty of ‘em left, but even a gadfly should be help to us now.”
“To them,” Charles said. They drank again.
“I do not ordinarily drink,” the Swedish king explained, “but these are not ordinary times. Moreover, I am getting old, and find myself often doing things I would never have dreamed of in the past.” He glanced conspicuously at the tsar.
“To —all of us here. Win or lose, this is a fight they shall never forget.”
Peter shook his head. “Not true. If we lose, there shall be no one to remember it.”
“Then we must win. I want them to remember that I finally settled my score with you.”
Peter's face twitched, but to Oglethorpe's surprise, the remark didn't seem to anger the tsar. “It may be that our foe will settle it for us.” His face grew longer. “I come here a pauper. I have few men in arms, and those mostly belong to my daugh-ter's guard. I have no cannon, not even weapons of