The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [96]
Still cursing, Franklin fumbled at his sword belt—whose buckle, naturally, dragged at him like an anchor—and finally managed it. Free of it, he scrambled to his feet.
“Be calm, Mr. Franklin,” Red Shoes cautioned.
“Elizavet!” the tsar, divested of sword and pistol, heedless of the situation, bounded across the yards separating them; and a young, pretty girl with thick black hair flew to meet him. They embraced, and he whirled her around. “By God, I have my daughter!” Peter shouted. “It is better than a kingdom! My sweet Elizavet!”
The girl, weeping and laughing at the same time, buried her face in his shoulder.
Franklin, calmed somehow by that meeting, turned back to the woman. “Who are you?” he asked huskily.
“I am who you said, the slayer of Newton. Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil.”
“You admit it.”
“It was war,” she said, frowning as if at a child asking a question she did not feel he was old enough to understand the answer to. “He was killing me, you know, and my friends, and my son—” She broke off. “I regretted killing him— especially once I learned who he was—but how can I apologize? I know who you are, Monsieur Franklin. How many men did you kill at the battle of Venice, with your balloon bombs and your lightning kites?”
He heard her words, but this was the strangest thing—her voice was clipped, as if produced by a steel model of a human throat, as if she could never even imagine what remorse might be.
But she was weeping.
That produced an emotion in Ben, something weird. He didn't know what it was. Disgust? A new kind of anger?
He didn't know, so he turned away.
Red Shoes watched Tug approach, wondering what he was going to say. “I'm glad to see you well,” is what he settled on.
Red Shoes could see that the sailor was searching him, trying to read him the way white men read books.
“Red Shoes,” Tug said. Or was it, “Red Shoes?”
He stepped closer, and Tug flinched but stood his ground.
“It is me,” Red Shoes whispered. “It's me, not a spirit wearing my skin. I would never harm you, Tug.”
“Y'll f ‘rgive me, but after what I seen—”
“They tried to kill me, Tug. They thought I was something I'm not.”
“The little babies tried to kill y'? Th’ sweet young girls?”
“No. But I went mad, Tug. Not for long. I'm not exactly the same as I was, but I am me. Remember that night in Algiers, when you took me to find a woman?”
“Yeah. You acted wondrous strange that night, too.”
“Remember that you saved me in Venice?”
“I remember you savin’ us in— eh—what used to be London. But …” He paused. “Is it really you?”
“Yes.”
“I done what y’ said t'do.”
“I know. Thank you. Will you shake my hand?”
Tug hesitated another instant, then stuck his hand out, and they clasped. “Flint Shouting'll try t’ kill you, y'know, when he finds out y'r here.”
“I wouldn't blame him if he tried, but I would rather he didn't. I'll talk to him, later. And to you. You'll have to tell me about your adventures coming here.”
“Th’ same. Glad to see th’ miss made it, too,” he said, nodding toward Grief.
Grief noticed and flashed Tug one of her rare smiles, and the pirate grinned even wider.
Red Shoes glanced at Franklin, who seemed to have retreated to a world of his own. “Well, Mr. Franklin?” he said. “Shall we go into the city? We have important things to say and do, and not much time to do them in.”
Franklin looked at him, then briefly back at Adrienne, his expression still stunned. “Of course,” he said. “Let's go.”
They walked the horses the rest of the way, Grief at Red Shoes’ side as always.
“Tug didn't seem frightened of you anymore,” she said to him.
“He was. I could see it. He doesn't trust me, and maybe he shouldn't. I don't trust myself.”
“Your power is returning.”
“Yes, some of it.”
“And your heart?”
“I don't feel the same as I did—angry, bigger than myself. But I still believe the course I saw then is the right course.”
“But you no longer have the power to pursue it.