“Oh, Epiny, it’s so much more complicated than that. You know it is. A fair chance of clearing myself means there’s also a fair chance I’ll dance at the end of the rope, unless they flog me to death first. Even if I clear myself in Gettys, how do I explain to anyone how I slipped away from that mob: do you think that anyone would think me innocent if I told them I’d done it with Speck magic?”
“They wouldn’t like it at all,” Kesey chimed in. “Soldiers don’t like to think anyone can fool them, and Nevare fooled them all. And let them live with a lot of guilt for a long time, to boot. And most of them still figure that Nevare, uh, you know, with the Captain’s dead wife. Some of the fellows speculate that if she lied, maybe she was a temptress, too, and—”
“Kesey!” I said sharply.
The old soldier abruptly closed his mouth and nodded. “Right,” he said. He picked up his tin cup of coffee, wincing a bit, for the coffee had warmed the metal. “I’m thinking that perhaps you’d like to speak to Miz Kester in private. And seeing as how you’re her cousin and all, if I heard that right, ain’t a thing improper about that. So I might take this cup of coffee and go outside and sit for a bit.”
“Oh, we mustn’t drive you out of your own home,” Epiny decided firmly. “Nevare and I can sit outside.” And so saying, she rose. With her baby in one arm, she took my arm with her free hand and guided us out of the door. I barely had time to get my cup of coffee. She seemed content to let her own remain on the table.
The day seemed bright after the dimness of the cabin. We walked over to the cart and she sat down on its open tail. The horse shifted doubtfully in his harness. “Well,” she said, and then, as if it were the most important thing, she observed, “That was the most dreadful coffee I’ve ever tasted. How can you drink it?”
“I’ve been hungry enough lately to eat or drink anything that’s offered to me.” I took a mouthful. She was right about the coffee, but I swallowed it anyway and tried to keep my face under control.
She laughed sympathetically. “My poor cousin. When you come home with me tonight, I’ll do my best to remedy that. Between Amzil and me, we put some fair meals on the table. We are not as hungry as we have been, thank the good god. The supply wagons have come through at last, so there is plenty of plain food, bread and porridge and such. And the little gardens behind the houses have started to give up a bit of fresh vegetable now and then. But for a time there, I was certainly hungry enough to eat whatever was offered to me. Oh, I’ve chattered like a squirrel long enough. Tell me how you come to be here? What happened to you? How was that you and not you, that horrible night—”
I shook my head. “I’ll tell it all when both you and Spink can hear it.” In truth, I wanted to put off that reckoning a little while. Surely my cousin would no longer look at me so fondly once she had heard of my part in the raid. “Instead, you must finish telling me what has been going on here. You were starving?”
She nodded. Her eyes grew larger and her face paled. “The Speck raid destroyed all the food stored in the warehouses. People were left with only what they’d had in their homes, and the men in the barracks had even less. They salvaged what meat they could from the horses that had died in the fires, and tore apart the burned wreckage looking for anything, half a sack of flour or a scorched bag of grain. Anything. A few people had chickens that they were wintering over, but with their feed gone or eaten by people, there was no sense in holding back. So we ate all the chickens, what milk goats there were, the hogs—it was terrible, Nevare. It was like we were eating our hopes for the future. There is still hardly any livestock left in town, and half our troops are afoot. Those last weeks, there was next to nothing. I soaked out a molasses keg and then gave the children warmed molasses water. We had no hope at all.”
Despite the gravity of the tale, I had to grin. “And then Sergeant Duril arrived,” I filled in.
She cocked her head, a trifle surprised perhaps. “That he did. To save the day. I don’t know how that old man got through; the sides of his cart were muddy and his horses were next to dead. Oh, it was like a blessing from heaven to see that cartload of goods: flour, sugar, beans, peas, molasses, oil—everything we’d been longing for. I felt as rich as a queen when he knocked on my door and said, ‘Miz Epiny Kester? Your family has sent you some help!’
“But it wasn’t five minutes before every woman in town was standing in the street outside my house, staring at that food. Some of their little children were weeping and begging for a taste, and some were too starved to even do that. And Spink came out and sent them all home to get bowls and cups, so we could measure out shares for all, as far as it would go. I can’t tell you how I hated him, for all of half a moment! There we were, with our own little baby down to skin and bones, and he was giving our food away! But I knew he was right. How would I ever have faced any of them, if I had kept plenty of food for my own and let their children go empty?”