It was late afternoon, and the sun was coming in low through the deer palings, throwing dappled light through the bean vines onto the twisted straw of the skep, where bees were coming and going with a lazy grace.
I reached out and put a hand on the hive, feeling the lovely deep hum of the workings within. Amy Higgins is gone—is dead. You know her—her dooryard is full of hollyhocks and she’s got—had—jasmine growing by her cowshed and a good patch of dogwood nearby.
I stood quite still, letting the vibration of life come into my hand and touch my heart with the strength of transparent wings.
Her flowers are still growing.
Part Three
* * *
THE BEE STING OF ETIQUETTE AND THE SNAKEBITE OF MORAL ORDER
31
Pater Familias
Savannah, Royal Colony of Georgia
WILLIAM HAD BEEN HALF hoping that his inquiries for Lord John Grey would meet either with total ignorance or with the news that his lordship had returned to England. No such luck, though. Major General Prévost’s clerk had been able to direct him at once to a house in St. James Square, and it was with thumping heart and a ball of lead in his stomach that he came down the steps of Prévost’s headquarters to meet Cinnamon, waiting in the street.
His anxiety was dispersed the next instant, though, as Colonel Archibald Campbell, former commander of the Savannah garrison and William’s personal bête noire, came up the walk, two aides beside him. William’s first impulse was to put his hat on, pull it over his face, and scuttle past in hopes of being unrecognized. His pride, already raw, was having none of this, and instead, he marched straight down the walk, head high, and nodded regally to the colonel as he passed.
“Good day to you, sir,” he said. Campbell, who had been saying something to one of the aides, looked up absently, then halted abruptly, stiffening.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he said, broad face darkening like a seared chop.
“My business, sir, is none of your concern,” William said politely, and made to pass.
“Coward,” Campbell said contemptuously behind him. “Coward and whoremonger. Get out of my sight before I have you arrested.”
William’s logical mind was telling him that it was Campbell’s relations with Uncle Hal that lay behind this insult, and he ought not to take it personally. He must walk straight on as though he hadn’t heard.
He turned, gravel grinding under his heel, and only the fact that the expression on his face made Campbell go white and leap backward allowed John Cinnamon time to take three huge strides and grab William’s arms from behind.
“Amène-toi, imbécile!” he hissed in William’s ear. “Vite!” Cinnamon outweighed William by forty pounds, and he got his way—though in fact, William didn’t fight him. He didn’t turn round, though, but backed—under Cinnamon’s compulsion—slowly toward the gate, burning eyes fixed on Campbell’s mottled countenance.
“What’s wrong with you, gonze?” Cinnamon inquired, once they were safely out the gate and out of sight of the clapboard mansion. The simple curiosity in his voice calmed William a little, and he wiped a hand hard down his face before replying.
“Sorry,” he said, and drew breath. “That—he—that man is responsible for the death of a—a young lady. A young lady I knew.”
“Merde,” Cinnamon said, turning to glare back at the house. “Jane?”
“Wh—how—where did you get that name?” William demanded. The lead in his belly had caught fire and melted, leaving a seared hollow behind. He could still see her hands, small and delicate and white, as he’d laid them on her breast—crossed, the torn wrists neatly bound in black.
“You say it in your sleep sometimes,” Cinnamon said with an apologetic shrug. He hesitated, but his own urge was strong and he couldn’t keep from asking, “So?”
“Yes.” William swallowed and repeated more firmly, “Yes. He’s here. Number Twelve Oglethorpe Street. Come on, then.”
THE HOUSE WAS modest but neat, a white-painted clapboard with a blue door, standing in a street of similarly tidy homes, with a small church of red sandstone at the end of the street. Rain-shattered leaves had fallen from a tree in the front garden and lay in damp yellow drifts upon a brick walk. William heard Cinnamon draw in his breath as they came to the gate, and saw him glance to and fro as they went up to the door, covertly taking note of every detail.
William hammered on the door without hesitation, ignoring the brass knocker in the shape of a dog’s head. There was a moment of silence, and then the sound of a baby crying within the house. The two young men stared at each other.
“It must be his lordship’s cook’s child,” William said, with assumed nonchalance. “Or the maid. Doubtless the woman will—”
The door swung open, revealing a frowning Lord John, bareheaded and in his shirtsleeves, clutching a small, howling child to his bosom.
“You woke the baby, damn your eyes,” he said. “Oh. Hallo, Willie. Come in, then, don’t stand there letting in drafts; the little fiend is teething, and catching a cold on top of that won’t improve his temper to any noticeable extent. Who’s your friend? Your servant, sir,” he added, putting a hand over the child’s mouth and nodding to Cinnamon with a fair assumption of hospitality.
“John Cinnamon,” both young men said automatically, speaking together, then stopped, equally flustered. William recovered first.
“Yours?” he inquired politely, with a nod at the child, who had momentarily stopped howling and was gnawing ferociously on Lord John’s knuckle.
“Surely you jest, William,” his father replied, stepping back and jerking his head in invitation. “Allow me to make you acquainted with your second cousin, Trevor Wattiswade Grey. I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Cinnamon—will you take a drop of beer? Or something stronger?”
“I—” Panicked, Cinnamon looked to William for direction.
“We may require something a bit stronger, sir, if you have it.” William reached for the baby, whom he received gingerly from Lord John’s wet, relieved grasp. His father wiped his hand on his breeches and extended it to Cinnamon.
“Your servant, s—” He stopped abruptly, having evidently got a good look at Cinnamon for the first time. “Cinnamon,” he said slowly, eyes fixed on the big Indian’s face. “John Cinnamon, you said?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cinnamon huskily, and dropped suddenly to his knees with a crash that rattled the china on the sideboard and made little Trevor stiffen and shriek as though he were being disemboweled by badgers.
“Oh, God,” said Lord John, glancing from Trevor to Cinnamon and back again. “Here.” He took the child from William again and joggled it in a practiced fashion.
“Mr. Cinnamon,” he said. “Please. Do get up. There’s no need—”
“What in God’s name are you doing to that baby, Uncle John?” The furious female voice came from the doorway on the far side of the room, and William’s head swiveled toward it. Framed in the doorway was a blond girl of medium size, except for her bosoms, which were very large, white as milk, and half-exposed by the open banyan and untied shift that she wore.