Everfair (16 page)

No need for silence anymore. The ladder hit the hole's sides and up onto the roof went Captain Renji. Somehow Lily was right behind him. Tink shoved the new men out of his way and went next—but Yoka still had Tink's weapon! He ran forward anyway, over the roof's shallow peak. Shadows at the roof's opposite end rushed toward him. Leopold's police. He ran faster, past his love, yelling, waving his fists. Punching, kicking—then he broke through the thugs to where a man lay on his face on the tiles. Iron links bound his ankles and wrists. This must be the king.

Tink bent over him. Lily caught up and together they helped the king stand. He would need to be rid of these chains to ascend
Mbuza
's ropes. The king attempted to say something, but shouts surrounded them: incomprehensible orders, a gunshot, confusion—then he and Lily were once more free of attackers, and somehow he'd got his axe from Yoka. Blood dripped down the handle. It was becoming slippery. He wiped it clean on his thigh and tightened his grip.

At this side of the roof,
Mbuza
's wood and rope ladder swung low. He urged the king to lie flat and gestured for him to hold his arms over his head and wide as possible. Then Tink chopped down through the chain. His axe's blade bit deep into the roof, but several links broke—more than necessary. He wrestled the axe's handle around till it came up. Kicking the king's legs apart, he prepared him for the next blow. It took three. The third came down an inch from Lily's hand as she tugged on a damaged link. Tink stared, aghast at what he'd almost done, wasting precious moments.

A yank on his arm made his mind start to work again. Escape.
Mbuza
. Silhouettes were visible against the aircanoe's one light: the captain and Yoka, already on their way up. One freed prisoner had followed them; it was another who urged Tink toward the rope ladder, then grasped its dangling foot.

Tink looked around. Lily, unhurt, lagged behind, helping the staggering king. Tink turned back and propped the man's other side. The ladder's foot had dropped temporarily lower. The king pulled himself up along it, groaning but making progress. Lily let him get a few rungs ahead before she started. Tink waved at the man who'd brought him to his senses, indicating it was his turn. The man shook his head no. He wanted to stay. Tink couldn't argue with him. He didn't even know what language to use. The ladder's end rode up. Tink clung to it, then hoisted himself higher till his feet rested on a rung.

Only he, his love, and the king remained on the ladder. He heard the thud of ballast hitting the ground and
Mbuza
rose suddenly. One of them could fall! He cried out for the captain to be more careful, but of course no one heard.

Their ascent steadied. Tink glanced down at the bright square in the prison's roof, the attic's entrance. The light would blind him; averting his eyes, he caught a writhing movement and a white flash. A gun banged—a last shot by a wounded enemy. He only knew they'd scored a lucky hit when a hot liquid began to rain down upon him. Softly.

He prayed the blood was the king's. He saw when at last he tumbled into the basket behind Lily that it wasn't.

Sticking to the plan,
Mbuza
flew high above Kinshasa's perimeter, loosing bombs and baskets of burning pitch. Plenty of havoc. Plenty of chances for the rest of those freed to escape the town. Plenty of time for Lily to tell Tink how to construct a tourniquet for her ruined right leg.

Lily had worked with Mrs. Hunter and Mademoiselle Toutournier for years, so she was the closest the rescue expedition had brought to a doctor. By the light of the lamp the new man held, she examined her own wound, shivering. “S-some of the sh-sh-shot has prob-probably l-lodged in the-the t-t-t-tibia.” She lay back panting, sweating through the dye.

“Where?” Tink's own sweat was drying fast in the high air. Which wasn't cool enough that his love should tremble like that.

“My sh-sh-shin.”

“Why are you cold? What can I do?”

“Shock, I th-think. I n-n-need cov-covering.”

His own chest was bare. He had tied his shirt below her red knee, sticking his axe's handle in the knot, trying as he twisted it not to look at the shattered mess above her ankle. The new man wore only rags. A woman carrying a cup came into the lamplight. Tink grabbed the piece of barkcloth hanging from her shoulders and tucked it around Lily.

“Drink this. You are thirsty.” The woman with the cup was Nenzima, a fighter and elder. “Water.” Tink raised Lily's head and she swallowed eagerly. He should have thought of doing this.

“Thank-thank you! But it t-t-tastes—s-something else?”

“A root,” Nenzima confirmed, “to take away your pain.”

“I am afr-fr-fraid it's w-wasted.” Her eyes closed. “T-Tink.”

“Yes, love?”

“You must loose—loose the tourniquet again s-soon. Every twenty m-m-minutes.”

He did as he was bid. Seeping blood formed a long puddle on the mat beneath his love's terrible wound. It sank away swiftly as he reapplied pressure.

“It w-will probally still havva be amputatate,” Lily mumbled. Tink looked at her face, its bare patches paperlike even in the lamp's golden glow. It had blurred, its tightness slackening. The root water. Would she sleep till they got her home, to help, to the clinic?

“I will fix you a new leg,” Tink promised. “A better one.” He told her all about it, how it would work, how fine it would be, how strong, how beautiful. For a while she answered his questions, asked him her own, laughed, even, as he described the envy others would feel at her mechanical limb's awesome powers. Then she stopped talking. Then she stopped breathing.

Then she died.

 

Lusambo, Everfair, November 1897

At least in the caves of Kamina they'd gotten a church started. Here Martha Hunter had no weapons with which to win souls but the field hospital and the tiny village supporting it. And the jungle felt nearer here in Lusambo, somehow, seeming to encroach more than it had at Bookerville. That might be due to this location's heathen name. They would have to come up with another, eventually.

She sighed and stood up from her precarious resting spot. Soon the rainy season would descend upon them, and she must organize the roofed spaces so that there would be room enough for any incoming patients. Since the raid freeing King Mwenda last month, refugees had inundated them. More shelters were being built. They would be finished before the rains if time allowed, but best not to rely on that.

Many natives slept under dugout canoes. She had come down to the river to inventory the vessels in the mission's possession, and to convince herself that others—she among them—could do the same. Again she sighed, remembering the state of the soil below the upturned boat from which she had just risen: damp. Whether due to the river's proximity or the precipitation occurring even during Everfair's “dry” season, it had, in fact, been muddy. Bearable, perhaps, with a thick mat for protection, but it would get worse in only a few weeks.

Perhaps it would be best to give up. Though Mr. Owen turned the colony's conditions to good account in his letters to subscribers, they were, in truth, sadly sordid. Add to a bed of muck the certainty of retaliation by Leopold's troops, the probable danger from crocodiles and other wild beasts—

A loud slap, like leaves against a tree trunk, caught her attention. Animals? An attack? There were sentries; there'd been no shots. Next came footsteps: fast, but walking, not running. Chester? She had told him they needed to talk about changing the traction engine's accommodations; was it entirely necessary to have it take up a whole shed on its own? Fwendi must have informed him where to find her.

But the figure coming out of the bushes flanking the path to the hospital was that of George Albin. Tall as her godson, but not as well muscled—though the shirtless native dress he affected showed developments along those lines … and white, of course. And half her age. And madly in love with her.

Martha had avoided him since his arrival from Kamina yesterday. As long as she could. “You find me malingering,” she joked. “Really wasting time.”

He shook his head, coming to sit on the boat bottom she'd vacated. He smiled up at her through his lashes—unforgivably long and beautiful. “I doubt you're ever really idle, Mrs. Hunter.” His language was always respectful. She'd come to believe he wasn't simply expecting her to fall at his feet.

“Well, then, I was planning how we might better utilize the facilities. Miss Toutournier did the best she could before leaving us”—before abandoning her post and necessitating that Martha should come here in the hussy's place—“yet I'm sure I'll hit upon improvements to the current scheme.” She went on in some detail, hoping to bore the young man away. He appeared to listen, but then, unexpectedly, her hand was captured and held—tightly—in both of his. From his seat on the boat, he'd gone to kneeling in the dirt.

“Look here, that's all fine, but—what I mean to say is, I want you to marry me.” The haughty refusal she should give him caught in her throat. Such desperate eyes.

The boy rushed on. “In another ten days I'll be seventeen. Almost legally a man, in some countries. My father has nothing to say in the matter. As for Mother—”

At last she found her voice. “Your mother would be crushed.”

“She would not! There's not a bone in her body that—”

“Crushed,” she repeated firmly. “Let go of my hand.”

With a start, he freed it. “I'm sorry—I didn't mean—”

“What you propose,” she interrupted, “is utterly unsuitable.”

“No, I want you to
marry
me! My intentions are hon—”

She continued mercilessly. “The difference in our ages, our races—impossible!”

He was trying so hard. He opened his mouth—Lord God Almighty, his mouth—and she had to speak again to stop him from saying something she wanted to hear. “After losing your sister, your poor mother couldn't bear to have you disappoint her in such a way.”

He leapt up as if scalded. “Marrying you wouldn't be anything like that!”

Childless, Martha could only imagine how much Lily's death had hurt Mrs. Albin, who, despite her unnatural tendencies surely had a mother's heart. “Perhaps not quite so bad…” She felt herself weakening and fought her feelings down. They must come from the Devil. Mustn't they? She steeled herself: “… but bad enough. You will always be a good, Christian—”

“I see how it is.” George laughed, a laugh dark and bitter as badly roasted coffee. “Tink's right. I have to
prove
myself.”

“What?”

“You need a man, not a boy. I'm going to show you! I'm going to fight under King Mwenda!”

“No!” What could be worse than the death of a daughter? The death of a son.

“You'd dislike that? Dare I hope—”

How could the boy be so foolish? “Of course not! But Mrs. Albin—”

“Hang my mother! Hang her!” Color mounted his smoothly tanned throat, crested on his cheeks. “I mean—it's got nothing to do with her. I love you!” He stood.

Martha remained a little taller than him—though he'd been growing. “George. Are you sure? This is what you want?”

He nodded, started to say something, thought better of it and simply nodded again.

“You're young. In England you could meet—”

“I don't care! Since I saw you onboard the
White Bird,
Mrs. Hunter, I've known I was yours.
Yours
.”

Good. He hadn't presumed to think the converse: that she belonged to him. So many men would have. “I will consider it, then. Consider it seriously—seriously enough to pray.” She knelt as he had, smirching her dress. Closing her eyes. The air beside her heated with his nearness as he joined her.

Sometimes God was eloquent. At those times, words came to Martha, songs, whole symphonies played in the quiet moments after she'd made her pleas.

This was not one of those times. Yet, once several long minutes passed, she understood what steps she had to take.

The Reverend Lieutenant Wilson was wrong. Mr. Owen, though a hopeless atheist, was right. What happened here didn't matter unless the story of it could be told to those who would profit by their example. Everfair must send forth a missionary. Since the reverend lieutenant refused to leave his “flock,” it would have to be George. Her groom.

“We will become man and wife the day following your birthday,” Martha said. And the day after that, they would part. Without consummation.

“Mrs. Hunter! May I—” He reached his long, bare arms toward her.

“Call me Martha,” she said, “but refrain from embracing me for the moment.” She gave her fianc
é
a rueful smile. “I have conditions for you, George, and if you can't accept them, there will be no wedding.”

 

London, England, April 1899

“Splendid to see you again, George.” Jackie meant it. Since he couldn't be with Daisy for the moment, her son would do. Though of course not in all ways. Dismissing his unsuitable recollections from his mind, he pushed back from his overloaded desk. “You made good time from Bristol. I was this moment leaving to make sure my landlady had arranged every—”

“Shall I go with you?” The boy's voice was identical to his mother's; an octave lower, but otherwise hers.

“Are you sure? You may stay here if you like, and recover from your journey.”

“Oh no, I've been cooped up in a railway carriage since morning.”

“In that case, we must get you a walk.”

The day outside was more like May than April, but Jackie, remembering his own adjustments to the climate, insisted on George wearing a cap and muffler a clerk had left in the offices last week. Surreptitious glances and reflections on windows they passed let him study his companion further: the same short, dark brown curls as his mother's; the same long, fine nose. His growth during almost a year's separation had sharpened the resemblance. Even the young man's gloveless hands, slender yet capable-looking, brought Daisy's to mind.