I imitate his sarcastic tone. “A good day for throwing things, anyway.”
He offers his grimace and continues making distant splashes in the pewter-colored water. I keep tight hold of Sylvette.
“So what do you think of our grandes châteaux?” he asks.
“Hmmm . . .” I pretend to be thinking, but it truly is a difficult question to answer successfully. After visiting Madame de Sevigny in her poor hut of pine boughs and animal hides, I realized that we have been fortunate in the lottery despite the rudeness of everything. But to admit this won’t do. Either I must be witty or scornful, and best if I can be both, a talent much admired at court. “Such a place thwarts thinking,” I say finally. “Non?”
He laughs, but the successful parry gives me little pleasure. I wish I could ask how he feels, truly feels, about this place and about everything that has happened to us. Jest, witticisms now seem so irrelevant.
“Florentine—I say,” but he, too, has begun to speak, begging pardon for the witticism he made at Papa’s expense the day we arrived.
“It was nothing,” I say, offering my own dart.
“We all found ourselves admiring your father’s strength. We placed wagers on when he might tire and stop. No one won, mademoiselle. Remarkable!”
How dare they. “Ah, yes. Papa is a man of many surprises.”
“Indeed! It seems that now, instead of the river, he is testing his strength against the wood of these mountains.”
“We find it remarkable as well.”
“I daresay so shall Marie Antoinette.”
“Do you know, Florentine, you are quite right! She shall! We all know of her tenderness toward our late king, a man of great practical skills.”
I recall how our late king loved to tinker with locks, a skill not unlike joinery. And when he was younger, he’d go off somewhere in old clothes and work alongside common stonemasons, erecting walls. Courtiers laughed behind his back and called him eccentric, or worse. Which is exactly what we fear for Papa.
Florentine hides his displeasure at my triumph by turning to the river. Then Sylvette is barking at the clouds, her neck straining upward.
“What is it, chérie?”
Other barking echoes hers, coming from above, in the sky.
Saperlotte! Lines of wild geese flying low, under the clouds! And they are all barking like little Sylvettes. Where do they come from? Where do they go? South, it must be. Perhaps following the river to Philadelphia and beyond. Florentine pretends to aim a gun and shoot at them.
Hannah Kimbrell appears and, ignoring Talon’s earlier lesson, addresses us first.
“Excusez-moi. C’est pour Sylvette.”
Florentine sweeps his hands outward. “How dare you! Away with you, insolent girl. I have heard about you and see that you still do not curtsy. I shall inform the marquis at once.”
His tone is so venomous that I find myself blushing in annoyance and almost siding with the girl.
“Ah!” I say and laugh. “I believe she meant to address the dog, not us, Florentine. You see? She has something for Sylvette.” Hoping to divert his attention, I quickly unfold the piece of broadsheet.
“It does not excuse disrespect.”
“Indeed, Florentine, but look. A bone for Sylvette!”
“I care not if it is a diamond collar. She must pay for her effrontery.”
Sylvette diverts me from my own anger at the girl. She dances. She stands balanced on her hind legs. She hops straight upward and then drops to the ground and begins gnawing on the bone. I have never seen her so happy in this America. But then Hannah Kimbrell stoops to stroke her fur, and I pull at the ribbon leash. Sylvette topples backward.
“You Americans,” Florentine rants on in French. “You are all barbarians. I’m surprised you do not wear bones in your noses as well as carry them about with you.”
True. And yet—
“The impertinent girl must be punished,” Florentine is saying.
“Florentine, she understands neither your words nor your wit.”
“She soon shall!”
“Yes, of course. My dear Florentine, you are right. It is unforgivable of her to approach us like that, and with a bone, no less. But see how happy it has made poor Sylvette? She hasn’t had such a treasure since we left France. If Talon hears of this, then it will be hardest on Sylvette. The girl is quite taken with her and no doubt will bring her other gifts—if we do not interfere. Will you not desist for Sylvette’s sake?”
“And yours, mademoiselle?” he asks with sly innuendo.
“Of course! What is good for Sylvette is good for me as well.”
It is the closest I’ve ever come to speaking truthfully with Florentine. I fear, though, that in my truthfulness, I am quite misleading him. A fine irony, no?
“Allow me to escort you back to your maison, lest any other barbarians decide to take advantage of a lady’s vulnerability.”
Vulnerability. Weakness. It must be true, for look—I am incapable even of extricating myself from his presence. Hannah Kimbrell has moved smoothly away, swift as the American Indians of stories, while I totter alongside Florentine like a child.
Shouts come from somewhere nearby. “The Queen?” I cry. “She arrives?” But the voice seems to be saying Stop!
“We must learn what it is!” Florentine pulls me in the direction of the shouting.
It is only the boorish slave owner, Rouleau. And there are the horses, the wagon, and the two men, all of them at the edge of the forest, not far from the river.
“Kimbrell, I warn you,” Rouleau shouts in French. “Whatever you build here, I shall pull down. They are not to have a shelter to best the nobles’. Do you understand me?”
I doubt that either of them does. They continue unloading logs while Rouleau rages. “It will give them ideas. It is dangerous, Kimbrell. What they have now is good enough.”
Then, as if it has been emerging from the forest all this while, I finally see a green hut, not unlike Madame de Sevigny’s. Its roof and sides have been formed by boughs of pine and fir. A small cooking fire burns before it, and the white-haired slave woman emerges from the hut with a pot in hand. Her gown is of some thin and faded cotton, and she wears an equally thin half cape over her shoulders. Seeing us, she pauses in her work to curtsy.
“If you persist, Kimbrell,” Rouleau is saying, “I shall whip my slaves for each day you dare to come here. Beginning today.”
