by Eric Flint
His eyes twinkled. “That is quite evident.”
“And our happiness is complete, you understand. In every aspect of our, our . . . union.”
His eyes twinkled even more. “That is, if you will pardon my qualifier, outrageously evident.”
“Well, then . . . you see, I cannot understand why—”
“Why, Lady Anne!” Cuthbert Pudsey’s voice shouted. “There you are!”
Anne Cathrine closed her eyes. “Yes. Pudsey. Here I am.”
The Englishman panted as he ran up and leaned on what was left of the doorjamb. He stared and nodded at Brandão, who stared and nodded back.
If Pudsey had any sense that it might have been a propitious moment to take a few steps back to allow a private conversation to come to a natural conclusion, there was no evidence of it in his face or demeanor. “Bless me, Lady Anne, you are sly as a cat when you want to be, and three times as fleet of foot! You were down the street from Danish House before I had my pants on to be able to run after you. Why’d you go running out into the dawn on yer own, like that?”
“To find this.” She opened her palm.
“Wot? Bits of a brick?” He looked at her with a sad, assessing gaze.
“It looks like the pieces of a corner,” Brandão murmured, peering into her hand. Then with a bow, he withdrew. “I shall be happy to continue our conversation whenever it might suit you, Lady Anne Cathrine.”
She nodded her farewell, and closed her eyes again. So close. So damnably close. Then she stood. “Well, come along then, Pudsey. Let’s go searching.”
“Fer wot, Lady Anne?”
“Bricks,” she grumbled.
* * *
Two hours of wandering the rapidly changing, and expanding, streets of Oranjestad was as unpromising as it was fruitless. Owners of buildings built before the arrival of the Recifean refugees were made from all different shades of bricks. Only a few might once have matched the almost hay-colored shade of the fragments she’d found scattered within a few feet of the impact point on Edel Mund’s hearth. And the owners of those buildings whom she discovered at home were usually not the original owners. It seemed that many of the colony’s founders had moved on, either by giving up their stake or giving up the ghost: fever and want had intermittently stalked its first few streets.
Ironically, more recent constructions had bricks of similar provenance. Until last year, the call for brick had been infrequent and small enough that those needed could often be harvested from the ruins of the island’s few abandoned buildings. And the spate of new constructions that incorporated bricks were being put up by resettled Recifeans who’d purchased the bricks through the town’s two general merchants and did not know whether they were locally manufactured or not, since ships occasionally carried them as ballast and then sold them when no longer wanted or needed.
Anne Cathrine was tired, hungry, thirsty and just about to decide that the house she was examining didn’t really have the right color brick after all, when a vaguely familiar voice asked solicitously, “Lady Anne Cathrine?”
She sighed, tried to compose herself. So, here it is: the first veiled inquiry after my mental health. Because after today, there are sure to be more. How soon before I go from being Lady Anne Cathrine of Denmark, to Crazy Anne Cathrine, Her Lady of the Inscrutable Brick? She straightened, made sure her smile was serene, and turned.
Her seamstress—well, the far better one of the only two in Oranjestad—curtsied. “I . . . I saw you and your man examining houses earlier. And now, again. Are you—are you looking for something?”
My wits, Anne Cathrine was tempted to reply. It’s what you’re thinking, after all. And you might just be right. So the lamp was hit by a brick. Maybe. What would it prove, even if I could find it, much less where it was made? But Leonora wasn’t the only stubborn daughter her father had sired: “Actually, I am looking for a brick. Well, bricks. Of a particular type.” Yes, she did sound mad. No doubt about it.
But the seamstress frowned. “Why? What kind of brick?”
Anne Cathrine elected to ignore the first question and answer only the second. “It is a yellowish brick, rather like this color, I think.” She held out the fragments from Edel Mund’s hovel.
The seamstress squinted at them. “Lady, would you be so kind as to follow me?”
Anne Cathrine did, albeit suspiciously.
But in the shadow of a recently built granary, and well away from the town’s habitations, there was an old livestock trough, fed by a sluice from a cistern. Except the cistern’s capacity was being expanded by extending its sides upward by adding four courses of brick.
Hay-colored brick.
Anne Cathrine stared at the cistern, then at the seamstress. “You have done me a great service, and I shall not forget it.”
The seamstress—pretty, lithe-limbed, mostly Tupi she guessed—shook her head. “Think nothing of it, Lady Anne Cathrine. I was pleased to help. But why are you so interested in this kind of brick? Do you require them? Are you expanding Danish House?”
Eureka! “We are considering it,” she lied. Well, fibbed. For the female denizens of Danish House, the matter of how it might be expanded was a source of inexhaustible conversations that were safely disconnected from any likelihood of actualization. As such, the topic was modestly interesting while remaining completely uncontentious. “Do you know where such bricks might be procured?”
“Indeed I do, lady. You should be able to purchase them directly from the man who makes them.” She suddenly seemed uncomfortable. “Although, as I think upon it, you might wish to seek another source.”
“I am not particular about the source. Who makes them?”
“Heer Hans Musen.”
* * *
“And Heer Musen just started making bricks again recently?”
“Since the New Year, milady,” said the West African slave in surprisingly good English. “Before, he made them occasionally. Usually when another landowner had want of them. But now, the kiln is going all the time.”
“There much call for them, now,” another slave explained in a strange polyglot pidgin. She seemed to be a mix of many peoples. “Now that coin is in townfolk hands, and no Spanish boats come, more building. Because sure they stay.”
Logical, thought Anne Cathrine. She turned to the youngest of the four she had found working in Musen’s farther fields. “And you saw two men come from Heer Musen’s house the night after Whipping Square, and each take a brick before heading back to town?”
“Yes’m,” he said in a singsong accent. “They make me scared.”
“Why?” What I should ask is, “why more scared than usual?”
“They drunk,” he said, eyes checking over his shoulder. “Lotta rum when they come back, that evening. All come here. Haet and his men, too. It was bad. We scared. All of us.”
Anne Cathrine nodded eagerly, even as she asked herself, Are you really doing this? All over a few crumbled bits of brick? What would that prove? Lots of bricks come from here. And even if the brick that hit Edel’s lamp did come from here, there is no way to show who threw it or why. What are you doing?
“Ai! Lady, they come!” yelped the smallest slave, a young woman who hadn’t yet said anything. As if jabbed with pitchforks, Musen’s four slaves bolted, running back to their tasks as if pursued by rabid hyenas.
Which, Anne Cathrine reflected, was quite close to the truth of the situation: Hans Musen was running down the slope toward her, his prim wife not far behind.
She stood straight, turned to face them directly. For the first time since she’d cleared Oranjestad’s buildings and began sprinting, she regretted having left Pudsey panting far behind. But that had been her intent, it was her doing, and she would fend for herself. Pudsey might not even see her, given the trees that obscured this part of Musen’s tract from the one wagon track that led to the island’s various plantations.
“What—what do you think you’re doing?” Musen shouted as he came bounding and
panting through the pasturage.
She waited until he was close enough that she did not have to shout. “I was conversing with your slaves, mijn Heer Musen. They are quite well spoken.”
He stopped abruptly. Whether that was to avoid running into her or out of shock at her calm, casual reply, was unclear. “Well . . . you have no right to do so!”
“I am sorry, sir. I was not aware you insisted that freeborn people avoid discourse with your slaves. Indeed, I am not aware that you have the power to constrain the actions of freeborn people at all.”
“This is my property. This is trespassing. You will leave! At once!” He produced a muzzle-loading pistol. Just a single barrel, but that would quite suffice.
“I will leave quite soon,” Anne Cathrine said, “but I think it only fair to indicate what I have learned. So that you will not conceive of unfortunate plans regarding the slaves with whom I was conversing.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Musen shouted. But over his shoulder, his wife’s eyes were keen and assessing.
“I am talking about the investigation that is sure to commence as a result of what they have told me,” Anne Cathrine lied. Well, bluffed. “I’m sure you already know if it was one of your bricks that broke Edel Mund’s window and oil lamp. Your own son, perhaps? Either way, I am sure you know which one of your or Haet’s men did it—because you are all braggarts.”
“That isn’t proof!” Musen shouted.
“No, but testimony is.”
“Testimony?” Mistress Musen asked quietly.
“Yes. You see how it is, of course. When there was nothing more than vague suspicion, no townsperson would have been willing to reveal what they might have seen. They fear you landowners. As well they should. But now the investigation begins with a simple request to confirm what we know happened. Those interviewed need not make an accusation, or identify who did it . . . because that is almost as good as known, now. And once one witness confirms it, more will surely follow.
“A shattering window is not silent. Nor are drunken men. And I suspect they were in no fit condition to move swiftly and quietly away from Edel Mund’s house by narrow alleys or past unoccupied buildings.”
While Musen’s mouth was working to find words to utter, his wife turned and strode at a surprisingly rapid pace toward the smallest and quietest of the slaves with whom Anne Cathrine had been speaking. The slave turned from her work on the near side of the trees, saw Musen’s wife approaching, started to bolt away, but stopped when the Dutch woman barked at her, commanding her to halt or be beaten until she was unrecognizable. The young woman stopped, weeping, turning from side to side, as if she was trapped in an invisible cage.
Anne Cathrine felt a pulse of panic; Musen’s wife had the movement and face of an automaton. She just might be capable of—
And without thinking, Anne Cathrine was running after her. She heard Musen behind her. She was more fit and nimble, but he had longer legs.
As Musen’s wife reached the girl, she grabbed her hair, dug in her apron and pulled out a small pistol. She cocked and put it against the slave’s temple in one smooth, well-practiced motion.
Anne Cathrine stopped instantly. Musen ran past her, toward his wife.
Mistress Musen pulled the young woman’s hair so her skull was tight against the muzzle of the gun. “So, now you will leave. And you will stop making these accusations. Or this . . . person dies. And if you report that we have abused her, and an ‘investigator’ comes to find out, we will see him coming. And she”—Mistress Musen yanked the young woman’s hair, got a piteous cry in response—“she will never be found. So sad. They take their own lives sometimes, you know.”
Anne Cathrine felt as though she had jumped into the ocean, her body had become so suddenly and completely drenched in sweat. Why had she done this? Or was this, this very moment, exactly why she had done this? “You must know that cannot be, mejvrouw Musen. I have told others of my suspicions.” Another lie, but why stop now? “My silence will not stop the inquiries. And they will come out here, as I have, asking questions. Do you mean to kill all your slaves, then?”
Musen looked nervously at his wife. Who didn’t even blink. “If necessary,” she said, “but it will not be. I have seen you. I have heard you. You are not ready to know that your actions caused this creature’s death. You will do as I say.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do as you ask. Investigators will come. What you are doing is now illegal.”
Musen’s wife’s answer was a spray of spit. “I am the wife of a vrijburgher. This is my property. I may do with it as I please. No law says I may not. And if you penalize me for doing so, the others like us will resist. Your choice, ‘king’s daughter’: are you ready to start a civil war, as well?”
The brush rustled behind her. “Lady Ann, I—wot’s this?!”
She turned, hoping to wave Pudsey back, but the big Englishman had his own pistol out already—and then stopped, eyes wide and staring over her shoulder, face losing color. Anne Cathrine turned to see what had frozen him like Medusa’s stare—and found herself staring down the barrel of Mistress Musen’s gun.
She cocked her head, staring into Pudsey’s eyes. “And you will kill me? A woman? I think not. Lower your gun.”
“No. I reck it may be the only thing keeping Lady Anne alive.”
More rustling and Sophie Rantzau burst out the bushes behind Pudsey. Hans Musen brought his own gun up again. “This is madness. Get out of here!”
Sophie took a knee in the tall grass, folded her hands upon the other. “I will leave with my friend. And not before.”
Musen’s wife snapped irritably at him. “The English oaf means to shoot me. You have a gun! Will you not defend me?”
Musen went closer to her, gesturing toward the motionless Pudsey with one hand. “This is not wise. And his weapon is not full upon you. Be calm. This cannot go further.” His voice became pleading as she finally glanced at him. “We . . . he . . . ”
Anne Cathrine finally breathed again. Even Musen was trying to step back from the brink upon which his wife’s actions had put them. Pudsey seemed to be relaxing a bit, as well. Now, if only—
Musen’s wife sighed contemptuously—“Flaccid fool”—in the same instant that she snapped her gun sideways slightly and fired.
Anne Cathrine’s senses told her the blast, the smoke, the bullet were all coming straight at her . . . but instead, she heard the bullet whisper past, a foot away—zerp!—answered instantly by a grunt from Cuthbert Pudsey. She turned in time to see him tipping backward, the gun falling out of one hand, the other grabbing up toward a bloody patch above the bicep. As he fell and rolled, Sophie stooped over him.
“Geertje!” gasped Hans Musen. “You have—!”
“I have missed, is what I’ve done. I knew he hadn’t the mettle to shoot a woman. What are you standing there for, Hans?” Her face rigid with rage, she threw aside her spent weapon, grabbed the pistol out of her husband’s numb grasp, turned it over quickly, and rammed it into the trembling slave’s temple. “It is clear to me that you need proof that I will do what I say to my property. So, if you wish the other three wretches—and more—to die, just remember I did this.” She darted a scornful glare toward her husband as she cocked the much larger pistol’s hammer. “Now you will know I play no games.”
From behind Anne Cathrine came an unexpected answer: “I haven’t played at anything since I was thirteen.” She turned: the voice, the tombstone face, the erect sideways posture, and the muzzle aimed unwaveringly at Geertje Musen, all belonged to Sophie Rantzau.
“You will not shoot me!” Geertje hissed.
“Be assured, mej Vrouw Musen, that if you discharge that pistol, or move to train it on anyone else, you will never see the results of your handiwork. A bullet between the eyes has a tendency to ruin one’s vision.”
“And that would be the end of you, too! You are disgraced in your homeland—it is well known. You would be an embarrassment, cast out
, maybe offered up for Dutch justice. Because you will have killed the wife of a vrijburgher. Who committed no crime in destroying valueless property.”
Sophie’s gray eyes did not blink, did not move. “You counted upon chivalry to protect you in the moment Mr. Pudsey could have used this very pistol upon you. But there is no appeal that can protect you from me, Geertje Musen, because I no longer care about the consequences. So unlike him, I am not on the horns of a dilemma.”
“Are you not, Lady Sophie? I know you and your kind. You are born to wealth and made soft by it. Weakness and irresolution is in your very blood. You stand there, making brave noises, but tell me: are sure you are ready to kill another human being?”
Sophie sighed as if she was bored. “I was at the barricades when the Kalinago came within thirty feet of overrunning us last November. You were not. Perhaps you should ask those who were there with me if I can kill with a gun, before you make the rash—and perilous—assumption that I will not.” She sighted down the barrel and dipped it slightly. “Should you press me to prove my resolve, I must apologize in advance for shooting low. I am a hunter’s daughter and would normally make a quick job of it, would shoot for the head. But I am out of practice, and so, might miss such a small, small target.”
The color drained completely out of Geertje Musen’s face. She took her index finger out of her weapon’s trigger guard, eased the hammer back down, then pulled the slave to face her directly. She spat into the young woman’s tear-streaked face and stalked away, her pace and speed as machinelike as they had been earlier. With one baffled backward glance, Hans Musen chased after her.
Anne Cathrine raced past Sophie to kneel beside Pudsey. “The blood—”
“He will be well,” Sophie said in a distracted tone. “The bullet passed through, and no bones were broken. It was a small gun, the kind provided for ladies and assassins, who must keep them inconspicuously upon their person.”
Those words released a torrent of tears that Anne Cathrine hadn’t even known were inside her. “Curse you, Cuthbert Pudsey!” she cried. “You told her I was coming here?” She punched him in his unwounded arm, even as she felt a smile stretching her face so wide that it was almost painful. “Can I trust no one?”
