"I'd like to see Jublain again. He was a good man with a blade, Barnabas. The best I ever know ... excepting you."
"And you."
"Well ... it was a skill I had. I could ride, too, but how long has it been since I've seen a horse?"
"You'll be seeing them again. There's a Spanish man below the Santee who has nine horses to sell or trade. He's going back to the old country and he wants to live well. He cannot take the horses for the trouble and the expense, and nobody would wish them to go, yet his own people cannot pay the price. He has said he will bargain."
"When?"
"I've sent Kin and Yance."
Jeremy Ring gathered up his work and put it aside, drinking the last of his tea.
"I'll go over to John Quill's now, but I do not think he'll leave his place.
He's built three cabins now, two burned by Indians, and his crop burned three times, so he's sworn that the next time he will stand them off or die."
I went to warn Black Tom. He had been early asleep, and he rolled out and pulled on his clothes, a cutlass, two pistols, and a musket, and climbed the walls.
Sakim followed, for he would stand the watch until Barry was up.
The night was cool. The stars were out but clouds were moving in. It would be a dark, dark night.
Kane O'Hara and his wife came in from their cabin at the edge of their fields.
Kane had taken to smoking tobacco, having been taught by Wa-ga-su, who was still much with us.
It seemed strange, at such a time, not to have Abby to think of.
The wind seemed unusually cool off the mountain. Was this to be the night?
"No ... not yet." I spoke aloud, and Kane O'Hara, who stood near me, glanced over.
"Just thinking aloud," I said.
He nodded. "I do it, too, when my wife is from the house."
We watched the stars disappear beneath the oncoming clouds. The night was dark and velvet with stillness. I moved, and the planks beneath my feet creaked slightly. A vagrant breeze stirred the leaves of the forest, then passed on. We listened to the sounds, for these were our woods and we understood them well.
For never are the sounds of the forest quite the same, one place to another, and if the ear is tuned to listening it distinguishes each whisper from others in the night.
Leaving Barry and Tom on the wall, I walked back to my cabin.
On the wide bed I lay alone, thinking of Abby, of Abigail. I remembered the things she had said, the lift of her voice and the quiet, intimate sound of it in the night. I thought of the times when our children had been born, and how frightened I was when the second one came.
Why it was, I never knew, but upon that night I felt suddenly isolated, terribly alone, and I tried to get someone to stay with me-even a little longer, for Abby had been lying in Lila's cabin where she could be cared for better and watched over in the night.
All the terrible aloneness I had ever felt crowded around me then, for this was her time, and there was nothing I could do, I who would have done everything.
John Quill had stopped by that night with a piece of venison from a kill and I talked to him until he almost had to pull himself away.
There was no reason for my fears, for the child came easily, with no complications.
Sometime I fell asleep, and was awakened by Sakim's hand on my shoulder. "It is time, I think."
"Is there any sign of them?"
"Perhaps ... a little change in the sounds ... but very little. Come! I have coffee."
Coffee was still a rare thing, but we had acquired a taste for it from our captured cargo, long ago, and when that was gone we had gotten our supplies from slave ships bound for the West Indies. Sometimes we were without, but used ground beans or whatever was available.
Our kitchen table was scoured white. That had been Abby's doing and I had done nothing to mar its perfection since she had left. My meals I had taken on a bench outside the door, and used the table only when writing or reading. Which led me to think ... I had to see if John had poured candles for us. Mine were getting fewer and fewer.
Sakim filled our cups. "It is good, old friend, that we are together. I see you have been reading Montaigne. Earlier it was Maimonides ... I wish I might introduce you to Khaldoun ... Ibn Khaldoun. His Muquaddimah! That you must someday read. He was of the greatest of our thinkers ... not the greatest, perhaps, but one of them. A most practical man ... like you."
"I? Practical? I only wish I were. There is a madness in me at times, Sakim, and much of the time I am the least practical of men."
"Drink your coffee. There is bread made from the meal of corn here. Lila would be desolate if she thought you had ignored it."
"Not Lila. You forget how she is. She does what needs doing and is not hurt by being ignored. I learned long ago that in her own way our Lila is a philosopher."
"Well ... I only hope Jeremy realizes. Yet it is easy to philosophize about marriage when one is unmarried. Let us eat our cornbread. If we are to talk nonsense it is better to eat while doing so, then the time is not entirely wasted."
Sakim put down his cup. "Our good Khaldoun has much to say on the subject of eating. He maintains that the evidence shows that those who eat little are superior to those who eat much, in both courage and sensibility.
"Yet we readily accept the idea that a fat man is wise. Was he not wise enough to provide for himself? But we hesitate to ascribe piety to any but the lean. A fat prophet could never start a new religion, while a lean, ascetic-looking one could do it easily.
"A prophet should always come down from the mountain or out of the desert. He should never arise from the table.
"Also, he must have a rich, strong voice, but not one too cultivated. We tend to dislike and be suspicious of too cultivated a voice. A prophet's voice should have a little roughness in the tones."
"We had better get to the walls," I said, a little roughness in my own voice.
"It grows a little thick in here. At least, when I read Montaigne I can close the book when I am tired of listening."
"See? I drop my pearls and they are ignored. Well, so be it."
We climbed the ladder in darkness, feeling our way from rung to rung. Kane O'Hara loomed beside us. "Nothing," he said. "But the crickets have stopped."
As he left, he added, "If you need me, raise your voice or fire a shot. I shall not sleep, only nod a little over the table."
"I'll remain here," Sakim said, to Kane. "But don't eat all the cornbread."
The posts that made up the palisade were of uneven lengths and were deliberately left so, as that made it more difficult for attackers by night to recognize a man's head. The poles averaged between fifteen and sixteen feet above the ground with a walk running around the wall ten feet above the ground except at the gate itself. Two ladders led from the ground to the walk, and there were two blockhouses projecting from the walls to enable defenders to fire along the walls. The second blockhouse had been added sometime after the first, as we were continually trying to improve our situation. Jeremy was charging the extra muskets.
No stars were visible now. The wind was picking up, which made the detection of any approach a doubtful thing. It was intensely dark, yet our eyes were well accustomed to the night. So far as I had been able to learn, no Indian had succeeded in taking a fortified position such as ours, but I knew the dangers of over-confidence, and tried to imagine how they might attempt it.
A dozen times they had attempted this fort with no success. If they tried again, it must be because they believed they could succeed.
Something struck the palisade below me... .
Further along something else seemed to fall, and something snake-like whisked along the walk and disappeared over the wall.
Not quite over. It was a knotted rope, and the knot caught in one of the interstices between two posts. Instantly, I heard moccasins scrape against the logs outside, and almost at once a head loomed over.