6
Some people have the knack of sweeping into any situation as if they were born to be the light of all eyes. Beatrice might be mistaken for a shallow, flighty, and self-absorbed young woman, but I knew her bombastic and flamboyant manner concealed a generous heart, a brooding intellect, and an indignation at the unfairness and injustice in the world. She had had a lot of time to think about the curse of dreaming that would plague her for the rest of her life and had chosen to confront it head-on. Clutching a sketchbook and lead pencil, she sailed into the room.
“Cat! There you are!”
A magnificent white cotton robe in the style of a Taino noblewoman’s covered her from shoulders to ankles. A bodice beaded with pearls wrapped her bosom and waist, emphasizing her much admired and voluptuous curves. The lush curls of her black hair cascaded around her shoulders, ornamented with strings of pearls. She embraced me, then looked around my shoulder.
“Rory!” She ran to him and rested her cheek against his. Tears glimmered in her eyes.
“Prince Caonabo healed him,” I said, following her. “I thought you should know that.”
Prince Caonabo broke his silence. “Assemblyman, how can my people trust those who will not honor the law and our ancient treaties?”
“A heavy accusation, Your Highness,” said Kofi, with the stare of a man who feels sure of his ground. I was surprised he spoke so boldly to the Taino prince. “My advice to yee is to be careful in how yee choose yee allies.”
The prince indicated the door. “I should prefer to speak to the accused in private.”
Kofi looked at me, and I nodded my permission. He, Keer, and all the others left. Bee and I were alone with the prince except, of course, for his catch-fires and Rory.
Bee smiled blindingly at Caonabo for long enough to coax a smile to his grave expression. “I hope you see it is impossible for you to consider hanging my dear Cat.”
“Hanging is a barbaric Europan custom,” the prince replied as he crossed the chamber.
Reaching her, he extended a hand. To my surprise, Bee meekly handed him her new sketchbook, the one she had started after Camjiata had stolen the other. Bee had started drawing the year my parents died and had never stopped. She often slept with a pencil in her hand. Even now her fingers were smudged with lead. She had been drawing and had come in such haste she hadn’t had time to wash.
“So, Beatrice”—he pronounced the name charmingly, like Bey-a-tree-say—“we all three know she had a hand in the death of my mother.” I would never have dared to thumb through Bee’s sketchbook without permission unless I was far enough away from her to avoid objects flung at me. He flipped casually through its mostly blank pages. “Regardless, I have done as you asked.”
“What did you ask, Bee?” I demanded.
“I asked nothing.” Bee’s gaze was fixed on the sketchbook as if she expected spiders to crawl out of it.
“It is true. She asked nothing. A woman like Beatrice does not crudely threaten. She would never remind me in plain words that my claim to the cacique’s throne is tenuous and that I need her presence as my bride to give my claim weight. She would never hold over my head how precious a treasure she is. One need only look at her to know that.”
She flashed a gaze at him, her chin trembling, then demurely cast her gaze to the floor. “Does the marriage bed not please you, Husband?”
He tensed. “You know it does. But that cannot sway me.”
“Sway you from what?” I asked.
“Beatrice went to visit you at your domicile yesterday,” said the prince. “She returned to the palace before evening. It was at that time I believe she heard my councillors speak of arresting you for the murder of the cacica. Here is the sketch she drew this morning.”
He showed me a sketch. Bee had drawn five people on a wide path. The path was spanned by a huge monumental archway hung with painted gourds in the Taino style. Seen past the arch, lying below the height, spread a splendid city and harbor, almost certainly Taino if one judged by the ballcourt and sprawling palace seen in the distance. Rory loitered at the back of the group with a jaunty grin on his face, as if he’d just gotten away with something he knew he ought not to have done, and certainly ought not to have enjoyed quite so much. A second man was sketched entirely from the back, but I could tell he was Vai. He wore a splendidly fashionable dash jacket printed in an outrageous pattern of flowers like bursting fireworks, and he was holding my hand. In the sketch, I looked as cranky and out of sorts as if I’d been having a discussion I didn’t want to have. Fortunately I was wearing a fashionable military-cut riding jacket with a split skirt and a jaunty hat.
In the sketch, Prince Caonabo leaned against the right-hand span of the archway as if he had been waiting a long time for us to reach him. Bee strode out in front looking quite spectacularly…
“Pregnant!” I cried.
“Pregnant,” agreed Caonabo. He snapped the sketchbook shut, and Bee flinched. “There you are, Maestra, you and your brother and your husband, alive and well in Sharagua. What man would not be moved by such a pleasing vision of his harmonious future?”
I hadn’t had time to examine the sketch closely, for there was one obvious thing that might have caused this puzzling tension between them. “That is you, Your Highness, is it not?”
Bee blushed mightily.
Caonabo did not look at her, only at me. “You wonder if I believe it to be my brother. Haübey and I are twins, shaped to the same mold. Few people can tell us apart. But Beatrice can tell us apart. It is evident to me by certain small signs”—none of which he was going to share with me!—“that the man in the sketch is meant to represent me rather than Haübey. The sketch might be described as a bribe, if you will.”
I grasped Bee’s hand. Her skin felt like ice. “What do you mean, Your Highness?”
“What man would not wish to make sure such a future came about by protecting all the parts necessary to make this meeting happen? Do you not suppose so, Beatrice? A man’s ability to sire children is a mark of potency. Even though it is my sister’s sons who will inherit my position as cacique once I pass over, still, a cacique who cannot sire children of his own will be seen as a weak man unworthy of the duho, the seat of power.”
Bee’s fingers tightened on mine until my hand hurt. Her strength always surprised people, even me as I set my jaw and tried to relax into the pain, for it was clear Bee was truly upset.
He went on in that same level voice, but I could hear an edge. “But one problem remains.”
“What is that, Your Highness?”
“Dream walkers are barren.”
Bee gasped.
“How can anyone know?” I asked, but my mind was already churning. Camjiata had married a dream walker and she had never borne children. The radical fighter Brennan Touré Du had told Bee and me a story about a young woman from his home village who had seen visions and been killed by the Wild Hunt on Hallows’ Night, and Brennan had remarked that although the woman had been married for five years, she had given birth to no child in that time. “I mean, surely even if one or two dreamers never had children, no scholar would claim that means all such women are barren.”
“We Taino have studied this matter for many generations. We have our own disciplines of what the Romans name scientia. Who first observed the transit of the planet you call Venus? Who invented the steam engine, which was then carried across the sea to Europa? Our scholars have spanned earth and heavens with their investigations. It is known to our scholars through careful investigation that dream walkers are barren. The sketch is a lie, not a dream. Is it not, Beatrice?”
She released my hand. I winced as blood flowed back into my squashed fingers.