Quatrain (2 page)

As soon as I heard the creak of the wagon and the clop of the horses’ hooves, I made an excuse to leave the stove and move to the back door so I could watch their arrival. David pulled the cart up close to the door so that Sheba wouldn’t have to dirty her shoes in the mud that covered every inch of the property that wasn’t actually sown with crops. I assumed he would then take the luckless pig down to the slaughterhouse where it would be readied for the meal. I saw it snorting and nosing about in the back of the wagon. It was big and mottled and fat, and I was sure it would be tasty.

David drew the wagon to a halt and clearly intended to climb out to help Sheba down, but she was too quick for him. With a smile and a wave, she hopped to the ground, her skirts swinging and her dark hair fluttering around her face.

“That was fun!” she called carelessly to David.

“Will you sit with me at dinner?” he called back.

She only laughed and did not answer, just ducked through the door and let it fall shut behind her. Once inside, she glanced around to see who was present and what chores might be left to do. She was the most beautiful girl in the entire compound, but she was also the hardest working. Some of the other young women resented her, but the older ones loved her.

I loved her
and
I resented her. I would have given my life to keep her safe—in fact, I had practically done so. If I had not had her to care for all this time, oh, how different my last fourteen years would have been.

She loved me and resented me, too, though these days the resentment was winning out more often over the affection. She thought I was too strict, too watchful, too suspicious of her time. She wanted to travel to Luminaux or Semorrah, the most mysterious and beautiful cities of Samaria. She wanted to wear tight-fitting dresses with low necklines and highlight her eyes with liner and shadow. She wanted to be a desirable girl.

Well, I knew all about what happened to desirable girls, particularly when they were barely seventeen.

It didn’t help that she resembled me so closely—as if I, and not my sister, Ann, had been her mother. Like I once did, she wore her thick, dark-brown hair past her shoulders; its lustrous waves provided the ideal frame for her flawless olive skin and brought attention to her huge hazel eyes. She affected simple styles, which just played up her perfect features and full figure. David was not the only man at the compound who couldn’t keep his eyes off her; she looked luscious and unspoiled, yet rich with promise.

Pretty much exactly the way I had looked when I was seventeen.

“How was your trip to Benjamin’s farm?” I asked her. “Were the roads bad?”

She pushed her hair behind her ears. “Covered in mud. We didn’t have any trouble on the way out, but we got stuck twice on the way back. David said it was because the pig was so heavy.”

I glanced down at the hem of her dress, which showed only the faintest smears of dirt. “It doesn’t look like you had to get out and push the wheels free.”

She smiled—a wicked look. “David didn’t want me to get muddy. I guided the horses while he pushed.”

“And how were Benjamin and his family?” I asked.

“Very excited about coming over tonight for dinner! And very happy to see the sunshine. He says he’s lost everything in the southern field, because it lies so low the water would never drain.”

That was the sort of detail it would never occur to Ruth or Neri to ask about, or to retain if it was offered to them. That was what made Sheba so exceptional. She was not just beautiful. She understood what was important—or at least, what mattered to other people. She had probably inquired after Benjamin’s crops, her lovely face serious, her attention wholly focused on his replies. He was short and bald and old and married, but Sheba would still want him to admire her, to be pleased with himself because a pretty girl gave him a genuine smile. It was reflexive with her to figure out how to make a man like her.

“Well, I hope you got a good pig,” said Lazarene, the head cook, who had lived at the compound for forty years. “I’m hungry for some pork.”

Sheba laughed. “He looked like the best of the lot.”

Sheba and I had a little argument shortly before dinner was served.

The kitchen staff had gone upstairs in shifts to change their clothes and style their hair and otherwise prepare themselves for the grand meal. Sheba and I no longer shared a room—two years ago, she and a girl named Hara had taken quarters together, while I inherited Lazarene as a roommate. I understood that this was a necessary step for Sheba’s independence, and it was a relief to move in with someone as quiet and reasonable as Lazarene, but I couldn’t help fretting. Hara was a particularly silly sixteen, a pink-cheeked blonde with an annoying giggle; she wouldn’t be the one to hold Sheba in check if my niece ever decided to be wayward. I was not above rising in the middle of the night and stalking the corridors, checking to see if any of the girls were out of their beds and engaged in illicit activities.

Although I knew well enough that if Sheba wanted to misbehave, no amount of vigilance on my part would stop her.

We headed to our rooms separately, and I went through the motions of improving my appearance just so no one would wonder why I was not dressing up for the angels. I even threaded a ribbon through my hair—still as dark as Sheba’s—and put on a gold necklace to brighten my dull blue gown. I paused for a moment to study my reflection.

Tiny wrinkles around my eyes. A certain softness to my skin. I was forty now, and no mistaking. But my figure was still good—fuller than it had been when I was a girl—and my eyes were still an unusual shade of green. I remembered how it felt to turn heads when I walked into a room. Now and then, when I wanted to, I still could.

But tonight I didn’t want to.

I waited in the hallway until Sheba came out of her room. She had put on a deep rose-colored dress with big pearl buttons all the way up the bodice, and she had left the last two buttons unfastened. The pendant on her silver necklace dangled just above her breasts, and the five silver bracelets she wore on her left wrist chimed together to wreathe her in music.

“You’re not going to dinner looking like that,” I said flatly.

She gave me a mutinous look. “Why not? I thought you liked this dress.”

“I like it when it’s on properly.”

“You know Neri will wear that red gown that makes her bosom look huge.”

“She’s wearing her green dress. She said so this afternoon. Anyway, I don’t care what Neri wears. I don’t care if she parades around the house absolutely naked and the Archangel eats his dinner off her stomach.
You
are going to button up your dress, or you’re going to change clothes.”

I sometimes think how hard Ann would laugh to hear how I lecture her daughter.

I always wish that it was Ann delivering these lectures instead of me.

Sheba stamped her foot. “Everyone
else
will be wearing their most revealing clothes! Everyone
else
will be showing off for the angels. You want me to look like some prim little girl—you want me to hide in some corner, ugly and dowdy—”

“You couldn’t look ugly if you spent all day trying,” I said calmly. “Now, button up or go change.”

Still furious, she fastened the top two buttons and then brushed past me down the hall. As if she had said the words out loud, I could tell what she was thinking.
When Aunt Salome isn’t watching, I’ll just undo the buttons again.
It was almost enough to make me insist that she put on something else altogether.

If I could have done it, I’d have locked her in her room for the night.

Just until the angels were gone.

By most measures, the dinner was an unqualified success. Since it was common for all hands to sit down together at a meal, the dining hall was large and well stocked with tables and chairs. It was easy to accommodate the fifty workers, the three angels, and the thirty guests who had driven in from nearby properties. There was a certain amount of crowding, but that just added to the festive atmosphere—and people were already a little giddy when they first arrived, because of the day’s sunshine. Lazarene and the other kitchen workers had arranged the food on two huge sideboards, and the guests were expected to serve themselves. I helped carry platters and pitchers from the kitchen to the dining room, making half a dozen trips. I just didn’t leave the kitchen after my last trip back.

I had kept my head down every time I was among the diners, had turned my face away from the angels. Raphael was deep in conversation with Benjamin and his wife. I heard his gorgeous voice asking mundane questions about crop yields and acreage; I caught a glimpse of his golden wings, held tautly behind his back so that no one accidentally stepped on the trailing edges. Just a quick look, then I hurried back through the door, pretending I had one more tray to retrieve.

Then I stood with my back to the wall, breathing a little rapidly. Wishing that Raphael had chosen any other homestead to make his appearance. Hoping that he and his companions left at first light tomorrow, before I bothered to come down from my room. Praying that nothing—not weather, not plague, not appalling coincidence—would ever put me within fifty feet of the Archangel again.

“I suppose it could have been worse,” I whispered, trying to calm my rapid heartbeat with an attempt at wry humor. “I suppose Raphael could have chosen Stephen to accompany him here.”

Much as I wanted to, I could not bring myself to leave the kitchen for the rest of the night. I just had to know what, if anything, was happening in the dining room. So I loitered near the door, nibbling on scraps of food that had been left off the platters as being too burnt or too underdone to serve. I couldn’t distinguish much of the conversation, but I heard bursts of talk, frequent laughter, and now and then some distinct sentence in Raphael’s mellifluous voice.

When I peeked inside, I saw Neri sitting as close to Saul as she could draw her chair, while Ruth had managed to get herself placed across from Hiram. I gave Ruth credit for finding Hiram more likable than Saul—not because I had any reason to think Hiram was a particularly admirable man, but because Saul had a dark soul and a brittle heart. He was a well-built, attractive man with coloring almost as fair as the Archangel’s; like Raphael, he was dangerous and deeply flawed. I should probably find some way to tell Neri’s mother that she would do well to keep her daughter away from this particular angel.

But when I scanned the crowd, I saw Neri’s mother smiling with fatuous pride at the sight of her daughter cozying up to the man the Archangel trusted above all others. She would not listen to gentle hints; she might not listen to brutal facts. No, there was little I could do to stop Neri from racing headlong down a disastrous course. I would put my attention on my own charge and do what I could to keep Sheba safe.

The meal was about half over when I had a pleasant diversion. I saw Hope Danfrees, one of our near neighbors, excuse herself from the table and cross the room. Anyone watching her probably assumed she was looking for privacy accommodations, but I was not surprised when, a few moments later, she stepped through the kitchen door.