by Eric Flint
“With Sophie. Her mood has become—well, intolerable.” She stopped, considered. “And I love her.”
Ah. “I see. And her mood has become intolerable because you have not been able to snap her out of it.” And because coaxing her—or anyone—is simply not within your compass, is it, my most wonderful sister?
Leonora looked cross, probably at herself. “She is intractable,” she muttered, “or at least, unreachable. By me, at any rate. So, I admit I have failed. But you have been absent so much that you’ve really not tried in almost three weeks, now. It is time that you did.” Leonora got up. “Well? Aren’t you coming?”
* * *
After ten minutes of expertly parried attempts at starting small talk on personal matters, and other potential gateways to affairs of the heart, Sophie put down her own book—more up-time poetry—and stared squarely at Anne Cathrine. Who tried very hard not to suddenly feel like a little sister pestering an older one.
“Yes?” asked Anne Cathrine when Sophie’s stare was not accompanied by any statement.
“Please, if you must ask, just ask.”
“Ask what?”
Sophie seemed about to roll her eyes, but shut them instead. “I am distracted, not dense, Anne Cathrine. You have not been down before noon in at least two weeks, and your heart is not truly invested in the mission upon which it has embarked.” She opened her eyes; they were gentle. “I suspect it, too, is distracted.”
Anne Cathrine suppressed a gasp. Does she know? How could she? Is there something that I—?
But Sophie was continuing. “It must be very difficult.”
Ah, so perhaps she is only thinking of Eddie’s long absence. Which, just yesterday, had been extended another unbearable two weeks. “Not as difficult as the emotional weight you seem to be bearing, Sophie.”
“Which I have kept to myself. And which I shall not be allowed to continue, as is revealed by your presence now, and”—she closed the book—“the very subtle scrutiny of your sister.”
If staring, unblinking Leonora were sitting and leaning any closer to Sophie, Anne Cathrine would have presumed her sister intended to sit in the taller woman’s lap.
“So please,” Sophie concluded, “ask your questions, so that we may all go forward in peace.”
Anne Cathrine nodded gratefully, found what she suspected were the right words to ask about Hugh—
“Well, what happened?” Leonora blurted out. “Did he ask for your hand or not? Why are you so glum? No, that’s not it . . . Why are you so detached?”
Anne Cathrine wished she had worn a sun hat, just so she could sweep it off and whap Leonora over the head with it.
But Sophie merely sighed. “It is not so simple, so black or white, as that. Hugh wrote me a wonderful, thoughtful, searching missive that at times lapsed into poetry.” She smiled so sadly that Anne Cathrine discovered she had a lump in her throat.
“Searching for what?” Leonora persisted.
Sophie’s smile became small, personal. “For answers. For what place we may occupy in this New World. In each other’s lives. But I am not sure that we have, or can, draw the same conclusions from all that. Or make the same decisions.”
Leonora blinked. “Well, that all sounds far too much like philosophical theorizing. It is far too intellectual, so far as I’m concerned.” It took her a moment to realize that the other two women were staring at her, both with mouths slightly open. “What?” she demanded. “Do you disagree?”
Anne Cathrine tried to struggle past the idea that her sister had insisted that something—anything!—was “too intellectual.”
Never one to tolerate a silence when she was always so ready to fill it, Leonora plunged onward with a sharply assessing gaze at Sophie. “Entirely too intellectual. Which makes me wonder if there are . . . other underlying insufficiencies that might be causing your reluctance.” She squinted, if that might help her see some answer hidden behind Sophie’s eyes. “Are you not attracted to him?” Leonora asked.
Sophie’s casual gaze hardened into a long, unamused stare, if she was waiting for the younger woman to figure out that, in fact, two plus two did indeed equal four.
Frowning, Anne Cathrine shot a sideways whisper at her sister. “Leonora, really: you have in fact seen Hugh, have you not?”
Leonora frowned at her sister, genuinely perplexed. “Of course I have. Such a strange question!”
Anne Cathrine managed not to roll her eyes at her sibling’s guileless literalism.
Sophie shook her head slightly, which seemed less like disapproval than it did an attempt to shake off the shock of an unexpected blow. “Leonora, I assure you—in the name of all that I or you or anyone holds sacred—that Hugh’s, er, attractiveness, is not something I find wanting.” A small bitter laugh escaped her taut lips. “Not in the least.”
Leonora’s frown deepened, as if a sound hypothesis had been stunningly disproven. “Then if you are so suited to each other in all regards, what is it that might be holding you back? It is almost as if you fear happiness.”
Because the young woman had thrown it out as a notion hardly worthy of consideration, she did not immediately see what Anne Cathrine did: the color rushed out of their friend’s face. She leaned forward. “Sophie? Is there something to that?”
“I . . . I do not think so,” she answered through pale lips. “I have not been so happy, so ready to sing and dance, in . . . in more years than I can remember. Certainly, I did not fear that.”
Anne Cathrine heard a lingering tone, an unspoken “but . . . ”, and risked another question. “Or is it that, in embracing happiness, you are also risking its loss?”
Sophie became very still. When she spoke again, it seemed she was speaking as much to herself as the two sisters. “My father and mother loved each other. That is not just the idealization of a child. Then he died, and I saw her change.
“All her laughter was premeditated, either to appear appropriate or to influence those who heard it. The same with every smile, every touch, every meaningful glance. It was all theater. Because when we were not out in society, she was . . . she had become an automaton. Hardened by loss and driven by the fear that she, as a woman, would neither be allowed nor able to keep her own wealth and that which she had inherited from my father.”
She blinked and started, as if stuck by a pin from her memories. “Flirtation, betrothal, marriage, offspring, even trysts arising from irresistible passion: no, she now travels in circles where all those things are merely means to other ends. But if such mean and meretricious ends had no grasping, amoral manure in which to take root, then maybe the beauty would be restored to all of those celebrations of life, love, and family.”
“And that is what you felt here, in the New World. As you said after the dance.”
“Yes, but as I also said then, I did not yet know what that sudden sense of freedom, of boundlessness, meant.”
“And now you do?”
Sophie’s face seemed to sag. “I think one cannot know what it may hold without walking forward into it. And even then, what one discovers there will continue to evolve for as long as one lives. But at least one immutable truth has become increasingly clear: one cannot become free while still wearing the shackles of custom, or what one perceives as such.”
Leonora’s frown cleared. “So he did ask for your hand!”
Sophie shook her head. “I would not lie to you, dear girl. Not to save my soul. No, he did not propose marriage. But his letter was so full of . . . ” She closed her eyes, struggled either to find words or to say them aloud. “It was so full of considerations, of accommodations, of bows made toward matters that only exist back across the ocean in the lands we left behind . . . I knew where such a discussion would lead. And how any acknowledgement of the expectations and conventions of those lands would compromise the freedom we—or at least I—might find in this one.”
Anne Cathrine nodded. “But if you do not ask, how do you know he wouldn’t join you in rejecting all that? As you p
ointed out, you have both been used dismally by so many people and institutions, there.”
Sophie closed her eyes. “It is wrong to ask that of another. It is also unwise.” She opened her eyes; they were very bright, now. “It must be his choice, not my plea, that would put him on a similar journey. Otherwise . . . time and regret wear hard when we assume a shape that is not truly ours, but one we took to make another happy. Better early grief over what might have been, than a later tragedy of two who find their ways ineluctably growing apart after many years and much devotion.”
Anne Cathrine murmured, “And yet you do not sound reconciled to this.”
“I do not know if I ever shall be.” Sophie’s eyes sent out fast, thin rivulets, yet neither her voice nor her color changed. “But that is not the greatest misery in this.”
Leonora leaned forward. “Then what is?”
She looked from one to the other. “Do you not see? Whether or not I deserve it, Hugh loves me. It shines from every line he has ever written, and from every moment we have spent together, and nothing I said or did seemed to dissuade him from that feeling. And then, he comes to me on the day he leaves, lays his heart out in both prose and verse . . . and I run from him. Unable to even say why. Like a wild animal scampering off upon hearing a crack of thunder. A fear that arises out of instinct, out of reflex, not reason.
“And that is how I bid him farewell, how I let him go off to war against the Spanish who deem him a traitor. I sent him away with a heart as heavy as mine, just when he needs every iota of focus and awareness and energy to prevail, and so, survive. That was my parting gift: to undermine his best chance at survival.”
“You cannot take this upon yourself,” Anne Cathrine soothed.
“Can I not? Should I not?” Sophie retorted sharply. “I may bear him love, but that merely adds irony to tragedy if he dies because of it. As I warned him at the outset, I am not to be trusted.” She laughed bitterly. “And here I have been, dreaming—as that Englishman’s play says—of being one of the goodly creatures in this brave New World. That all would be transformed, and all could be made anew.” She uttered a single, hollow laugh. “What was I thinking?”
Ann Cathrine reached out and took her hand. “You were thinking that in a new place, love might be greater than the crushing weight of duty, convention, and religious prejudice. And you may yet be right, that this is indeed that brave New World.”
Sophie looked up, her eyes as gray as rain upon a winter ocean. “Perhaps no world can ever be that new.” She shook her head and repeated, “What was I thinking?”
Neither sister could find a new or better answer.
Chapter 40
Oranjestad, St. Eustatia
Jan van Walbeeck was gratified to have his walking stick with him. A nice, tapering length of teak from his East Indies days, capped with a ball of brass, palm-brightened on its upper surface, brown-patinaed on its lower. Yes, a wonderful day for a walking stick.
Particularly in case he needed it.
Maarten Tromp was staring at his desk somberly.
“Well, are you or aren’t you?” Jan asked him.
“I am still considering.”
“Well, if you consider much longer, you are going to miss your stroll with that ravishing king’s daughter.”
Something in what Jan said seemed to decide Tromp. He reached into the desk and pulled out a smallish snaphaunce pistol that he’d carried from his earliest days as an officer. “Do you wish to walk with us?” he asked as he closed the drawer.
“More than ever, seeing you pocket that antique. Now, be sensible: if you think it best have that with you, shouldn’t you reconsider today’s walk? After all, the three wise men only informed the Politieke Raad about the stipulations for the tariff exemption five hours ago. Tomorrow the slaveholders will be much calmer.”
Tromp raised an eyebrow as he opened the door. “Will they? But that is beside the point. I am not Oranjestad’s governor.” He smiled, poked Jan in his broad chest before starting down the corridor. “You are.”
“And why do you think I am carrying this fine-looking skull crusher?” van Walbeeck replied, hurrying after him. “This is an unnecessary risk for you. You know how the slaveholders are. They will see you behind this. They are benighted, but not stupid. They know your fervor for ending slavery, and they know that only you had the political contacts back home to bring the matter before all the allied nations and get their approval.”
Tromp shrugged. “Well, if they think that, then it is all the more important that I am seen out there”—he thrust his chin toward the town beyond the fort’s inner walls—“than be suspected of cowering in here. Even if this is not necessary—and you are right; it is not—there can be no room for anyone to perceive and characterize my absence as fear or weakness.”
Van Walbeeck did not want to agree, but had to. “You are right in that regard. But . . . well . . . ”
“You are still convinced that we should have introduced the stipulations in stages, rather than in one announcement?”
“Well, to be frank, yes. Is it truly wise to push them so hard and all at once?”
“Maybe it is not wise . . . but it is necessary.”
“Necessary? If it causes a revolt? Maarten, we have lived with slavery for years. Surely we can—”
“I am not saying that it is a moral necessity, although that I aver that as well. I act with such dispatch because freeing the slaves is essential to the survival, let alone the security, of this colony.
“Historical parallels teach one unexceptioned lesson: if the slaves on this island had not been assured that they would be converted into bondsmen, and then have clear opportunities to pay those bonds off in a reasonable amount of time, we would not even be here to discuss the matter. They would have either joined the Kalinago during last year’s attack or stood aside. And no one debates what either outcome would have been.”
Jan shrugged. “If they had sat in their hovels, the invaders would have pushed past The Quill that much more swiftly, certainly before that handful of colonists and troops could have gathered to hold them at the outskirts of Oranjestad. And had the slaves joined the Kalinago? Flames and ruin. The colony would probably have survived, but the cost—particularly given the rising hostilities with the Spanish—would have been disastrous.”
Tromp nodded. “A slow death rather than a quick one.” They had arrived at the gate leading out to the streets of Oranjestad. “So: do you wish to join us, Jan?”
Van Walbeeck considered. Partly because he wanted to ensure the safety of his friend, and partly because he found Anne Cathrine’s presence delightful in every conceivable way, he answered, “I’m sure I will regret it, but lead on.”
* * *
Van Walbeeck stopped in the middle of the street. “Repeat that, if you please, Lady Anne Cathrine.”
She had rarely seen the governor stunned. She also struggled to remember her exact words, couldn’t, gave up, and settled for a rephrasing light on details. “According to the up-time history books, before the Dutch West India Company began its coastal conquests in Brazil in 1630, they had never considered entering the slave trade themselves.”
Van Walbeeck simply nodded and gestured for her to continue.
“They—well, you—did have slaves but almost all had been taken from ships seized from the Portuguese and the Spanish. It was only when sugar production in Recife began to grow that a number of captains proposed acquiring their own slaves from Western Africa. But they were opposed by several men who said that this would be the end of the colony, saying that greed is the cancer that kills conscience. They went on to assert that they would have no shortage of affordable workers, thanks to the escaped slaves already fleeing to them from the Portuguese territories.”
Van Walbeeck put a hand on his forehead while his other maintained a firm grip on the cane for support. “Well, your history has turned me into ‘several men,’ apparently.”
Tromp actually smiled. “They
probably mistranslated a phrase such as ‘a man as large as several smaller ones.’”
Jan sniffed. “If there was any reference to a superfluity in my person, it would have been of my wisdom and discerning taste in wine, I am sure.”
Anne Cathrine wondered if she was staring like one of the young up-time girls that Eddie laughingly remembered as “groupies.” “That warning—those words—they are yours, Governor?”
He shrugged. “I suppose it is possible that more than one person has uttered the phrase, ‘greed is the cancer that kills conscience.’ I only know that I did. And at that exact time. Of course, after Dunkirk, Recife had no way to ship its sugar, so the need for more labor, let alone slaves, ended almost before it began.”
Tromp nodded sharply. “And we shall make sure it stays that way. This is not merely a matter of prudence. The Ring of Fire was our redemption, it seems. Or a second chance.”
Anne Cathrine almost gulped at the words, “a second chance.” Exactly how I have thought about the Ring of Fire, ever since Eddie and I were married. I could hardly believe my good fortune, right up until the end of the ceremony, fearful that someone would coming running into the cathedral, would appeal to my father, would say or do something that would make me what I was before Eddie entered our lives: marriage chattel. A “gift” to be bestowed by a grateful king in exchange for sufficient aid to his throne: a young, reasonably attractive, almost grown daughter who would join the recipient’s family to the king’s by joining her body with—
Anne Cathrine slammed down a mental portcullis on that train of thought, decapitating it like a loathsome dragon that threatened to slay her right here, at the northern end of Oranjestad’s as yet unnamed main street. No. Don’t follow those thoughts further. Mustn’t follow them further.
Besides, there was so much else that deserved the attention of her bitterness and resentment. Not the least of which was the blithe manner in which such marriages were arranged, and later, tolerated. After all, kings and councilors in every land of Europe—indeed, in every “civilized” nation of the word—accepted the wisdom that, in order to maintain peace and prosperity, it was necessary to marry daughters not only to advantage, but to forge bonds that disinclined all the parties thereto from warring against one another. Yes, that was the wisdom of kings and councilors, who—regardless of their differences in language, culture, religion, even goodness—had one glaring thing in common: they were men.
