He frowned. “Reckon hit might uv been longer thin I’d recollected.”
“Hit wuz dark by the time ye passed the Neills, warn’t it?” Old Nathan said. “How’d Mary Beth see down t’ the road?”
* * *
“Why, I be,” replied the boy. “Why—” His face brightened. “D’ye reckon she wuz waiting on me t’ come back by? She’s powerful sweet on me, ye know, though I say thet who oughtn’t.”
“Reckon hit might be she wuz waitin’,” said the cunning man, his voice leaden and implacable. He lifted his eyes from Bowsmith to the end wall opposite the fireplace. The strop that was all the material remains of Spanish King shivered in a breeze that neither man could feel.
“Pinter must hev lost all hit’s virtue whin I went back on what ye told me,” the boy said miserably. “You bin so good t’ me, en I step on my dick ever’ time I turn around. Reckon I’ll git back t’ my place afore I cause more trouble.”
“Set, boy,” said Old Nathan. “Ye’ll go whin I say go . . . and ye’ll do this time what I say ye’ll do.”
“Yessir,” replied Bowsmith, taken aback. When he tried instinctively to straighten his shoulders, the chair rocked beneath him. He lurched to his feet in response. Instead of spilling the cat, he used the animal as a balancer and then clutched him back to his chest.
“Yessir,” he repeated, standing upright and looking confused but not frightened. And not, somehow, ridiculous, for all his ragged spray of hair and the grumbling tomcat in his arms.
Old Nathan set the book he held down on the table, his spectacles still marking his place against the stiff binding which struggled to close the volume. With both hands free, he gripped the table itself and walked over to the fireplace alcove.
Bowsmith poured the cat back onto the floor as soon as he understood what his host was about, but he paused on realizing that his help was not needed. The tabletop was forty inches to a side, sawn from thick planks and set on an equally solid framework—all of oak. The cunning man shifted the table without concern for its weight and awkwardness. He had never been a giant for strength, but even now he was no one to trifle with either.
“Ye kin fetch the straight chair to it,” he said over his shoulder while he fumbled with the lock of one of the chests flanking the fireplace. “I’ll need the light t’ copy out the words ye’ll need.”
“Sir, I cain’t read,” the boy said in a voice of pale, peeping despair.
“Hit don’t signify,” replied the cunning man. The lid of the chest creaked open. “Fetch the chair.”
Old Nathan set a bundle of turkey quills onto the table, then a pot of ink stoppered with a cork. The ink moved sluggishly and could have used a dram of water to thin it, but it was fluid enough for writing as it was.
Still kneeling before the chest, the cunning man raised a document case and untied the ribbon which closed it. Bowsmith placed the straight chair by the table, moving the rocker aside to make room. Then he watched over the cunning man’s shoulder, finding in the written word a magic as real as anything Old Nathan had woven or forged.
“Not this one,” the older man said, laying aside the first of the letters he took from the case. It was in a woman’s hand, the paper fine but age-spotted. He could not read the words without his glasses, but he did not need to reread what he had not been able to forget even at this distance in time. “Nor this.”
“Coo . . .” Bowsmith murmured as the first document was covered by the second, this one written on parchment with a wax seal and ribbons which the case had kept a red as bright as that of the day they were impressed onto the document.
Old Nathan smiled despite his mood. “A commendation from General Sevier,” he said in quiet pride as he took another letter from the case.
“You fit the Redcoats et New Or-Leens like they say, thin?” the younger man asked.