The captain of the Sirène, bound for New Orleans, refused to rent a cabin to a black man and so, once again, Rose found herself sharing with Hannibal. And once again, rage had flared inside her, orange as a carbon flame, when a white man’s disdain caused him to reject a black man’s money. Ben had learned as a child not to let his anger show on his face–or worse, tighten his powerful shoulders or massive fists–but Rose knew him well enough to see the flicker of emotion in his eyes. That was the thing that was so hard to live with: the daily grind of it, the myriad indignities as persistent and biting as mosquitoes. Even safely returned from Haiti, there was no space to revel in escape; just the reminders, again and again, that their lives were worth less and that Ben’s, because of his dark skin, was worth least of all.
Back in their rented room, he was safe enough to voice his bitterness, and her sympathetic fury–and her touch–had soothed some of the sting. Later, when he was lacing up her corset and helping her into the pink silk gown (she was so sick of that dress that she could scream, and she fantasized about burning it when they reached New Orleans and became themselves again), Ben said, “It’s just as well. You can keep an eye on him this way,” and Rose knew exactly what he meant.
Hannibal insisted again and again that he was fine, but there was a gray-green undertone to his skin, and his usual gait, which mixed carelessness and grace in a way Rose had never seen replicated, was stiffer than usual. He’d allowed Ben to check the set of his collarbone and apply poultices and fresh bandages to the gunshot wound, but whenever Ben turned his soulful eyes on him and asked him if he was in pain (Ben’s eyes did half the job of healer for him, and Rose had considered on many occasions that the same qualities that made him an extraordinary musician also made him such a fine doctor), Hannibal shrugged it off, a quip in Latin offered as easily as a flip of a coin to a cab driver.
And wasn’t that just like Hannibal? People loved him because he was charming and generous and never asked for anything, no matter how desperately needed. He held onto everything lightly, as though anything good that might come his way was just a dance—to be relished while it lasted, but certain to end when the song wound down. It was that nonchalant duende that allowed him to move as he did between the company of white and black and free colored, rich and poor and everything in between, without anything clinging to him. To the kinds of behaviors that in others would invite censure or rejection, the people of New Orleans–or any other town he blessed with his presence–only shrugged and said, half-exasperated, half-affectionate, “That’s Hannibal Sefton for you.”
It was a method for survival, sensitive as the shifting colors of the chameleons Rose had read about and just as effective: no one else in New Orleans could live as he did. It had taken her some time, but she had figured out that all of it was conscious even if it was practiced–like a dance, again, the way the steps lived in the muscles but only came to life when the decision was made to dance.
She’d wondered, often, what he was like when he was alone, and perhaps it was no surprise that he so rarely chose to be solitary. She had begun to suspect that he believed he was only tolerated when he was charming–to deviate from that role would be to become a burden, and that would lead to rejection.
It drove Rose crazy, and it bothered Ben just as much. But as often as they had talked it over, they had yet to find a way to make Hannibal see that he wasn’t a burden to them. Or that, even if he was, he was one they would gladly take on.
How else could they feel, after everything? She almost couldn’t believe it, the way he had followed her to Haiti with no hesitation. It should have meant certain death for him, and he had known that; the way that fate and his own charm conspired to find him a powerful protectoress didn’t change the fact that he was willing to die for her. He pulled that trigger for her, took that man’s blood onto his conscience, and now he wouldn’t even let her and Ben worry over his health?
Silly man, Mayanete had called him. Silly man, indeed.
The first night out from Havana, he stumbled into the small cabin (small, but not as tiny as the one they’d occupied on the Triton) while Rose was brushing her hair. The scent of cigar smoke from the saloon above accompanied him into the room, and when he caught sight of her, he immediately launched into poetry.
“Of thy dark hair that extends
Into many graceful bends:
As the leaves of Hellebore
Turn to whence they sprung before….”
Hannibal had a voice suited to poetry, rich and musical as his fiddle, but as lovely as the words were, they stung something in her heart: the man who wrote them had died of consumption.
“There is nothing in the least like hellebore leaves about my hair,” she interrupted him before he could really get going. Rose loved poetry as much as Ben did–almost as much as Hannibal himself–but sometimes it pleased her to play the rational skeptic, the no-nonsense naturalist.
“Ah, fair Athene, once again you spurn me.” The only chair in the room taken, he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shoe.
“You’re back early,” she said, voice neutral. It was well before midnight, and if he wasn’t playing cards or the raconteur, there was always his fiddle. But then that last was difficult now, with an injured collarbone.
“The passengers of this ship are philistines and I found their company intolerable,” he said, all archness, as though he didn’t spend more time with streetwalkers and stevedores than he did with anyone half as educated as himself. Not for the first time, Rose wondered what his aristocratic parents would have made of their son’s easy ability to fit in with any company.
He dropped his other shoe with a thud against the warped wood of the floor and tried to play it off as his usual casualness, but he winced as he straightened. He would never have allowed that pain to flash across his face if Rose’s back weren’t turned, but she was watching him in the mirror, and she caught it.
“It’s just as well. You could use more rest,” she said, setting her brush aside. Her fingers moved fast, braiding her hair into the two long plaits that kept it from tangling at night. She had already removed her corset and changed into her nightdress and though she’d slept well the last few nights in Havana, the past few weeks (since Jeoff’s death, really–her sleep interrupted by nightmares of that sweet boy bleeding out in a squalid alley) weighed down her bones with weariness.
“ὕπνος γὰρ δὴ πολὺς οὔτε τοῖς σώμασιν οὔτε ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἡμῶν οὐδ᾽ αὖ ταῖς πράξεσιν ταῖς περὶ ταῦτα πάντα ἁρμόττων ἐστὶν κατὰ φύσιν.”1
Rose sighed; the man had never once been caught without an appropriate quotation. “Even Plato would have conceded that sleep is necessary when healing, Hannibal.”
“χρόνος μαλάξει σ᾿,”2 Hannibal said, unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“οὐδέν ἐσθ᾿ ὁ κατθανών,”3 Rose shot back.
He let out a laugh then. “Touché, γλαυκῶπις.”4
Which only proved her point; he had to be exhausted if he was mixing languages that way. She turned around in her chair, tying off the bottom of her braids. “I know you didn’t sleep at all last night.” He’d been in some gaming hell, winning the funds for their passage back home. He’d met Rose and Ben at the dock at dawn, rumpled and reeking of Cuban cigars and French perfume, bleary-eyed but triumphant.
She stood from the chair and took the two small steps to the bed. Hannibal arched an eyebrow at her as she sat down beside him, and then the other leapt up to join it when she ordered, “Turn around.”
But he did as he was bid, even if he held his shoulders tense as Rose tugged at the bit of string that was holding his queue. His graying hair wasn’t as thick and glossy as hers; it tended towards lank when he was unwell. But it was soft, despite a few snarls of tangles which she picked out carefully with her comb before going back to the brush.
Ben brushed her hair like this, sometimes, each stroke releasing the tension (from spectacles, tignon, life) that she held in her temples. It was an innocent intimacy, and it reminded her of childhood, sitting on a small stool between her mother’s legs. She couldn’t remember Mama’s face, but she remembered the warmth of her, the tug of her silver-backed brush, the deftness of her fingers as she braided Rose’s hair for the night. Letting someone brush your hair felt like home, like safety perhaps, and with each pull of the brush, Hannibal’s muscles loosened. She kept brushing until his shoulders were drooping, his breathing slow and even.
“You should braid it at night,” she said finally, starting a single plait. “That will make it easier to manage in the mornings.”
He’d untied his cravat, and the vulnerable line of his pale neck above the slouching collar of his shirt was fragile in a way that kindled tenderness in her. It wasn’t the tenderness she felt towards Ben, nor yet the kind that Baby John stirred in her. It wasn’t even the kind she had felt when Jeoff and Aramis had cuddled up to her in bed on stormy nights when they were children. But it was just as strong.
Her mind flashed back to the conversation she and Ben had had in bed yesterday afternoon, the things they had finally said out loud. The words had hovered in the air between them for some time now, but she had never thought they would be spoken. If Ben had been a different kind of man, she might have brought it up herself–the way his eyes followed Hannibal whenever he was in the room, the quickness with which Hannibal always followed Ben’s lead, even into danger (perhaps especially there). But there was Ben’s rosary and his visits to the confessional booth, the true comfort he found in the host on his tongue. Ben was always first for her, the only man she could ever have found the courage to try for. His heart was hers to protect, and she would never force him to confront something he could not admit to himself. She had told herself that not everything belonged in the light of day; some things flourished only in darkness.
But then there was Haiti, and yesterday, damp sheets clinging to their bodies, Ben had brought it up himself. He had stumbled over the words, his tone tinged with shame, which she had done her best to banish. It was like his love for his sister; Olympe wielded power Ben could never truly accept, but he also knew that she was a good woman. It was difficult for him, living with contradictory truths, but his boundless heart made it possible. Perhaps…perhaps, eventually, that strength of love could overcome Ben’s objections to his own feelings about Hannibal.
But first: small steps. Till now, the friendship she and her husband shared with Hannibal had been a thing of occasional shared meals and laughter, punctuated by times of desperate fear and violence. Between that and the things that Ben was still frightened of, there was such a wide continent of possibility to explore. After Haiti, Ben had said himself, there was no denying that they had to give more. And that would start with small steps.
So Rose did not lean forward and press a kiss to the softness of the back of Hannibal’s neck. If that ever happened, Ben would need to be there, too, or it wouldn’t be right. Instead, she scooted further up onto the bed and lay down, her side pressed to the curving wall of the cabin.
“Your doctor ordered you to get some rest,” she said, slipping her legs under the faded quilt that covered the bed.
Hannibal had risen as she moved and was now standing looking down at her, braid hanging over his shoulder, eyes hesitant.
“Turn out the lantern, will you?” she said, holding his eyes steadily. After a moment, he turned to do so, and she removed her glasses, storing them on the little shelf above the bed.
The bed was just as narrow as the one on the Triton--no room for a sword to lay between them, but then the idea that they might need one was an insult to all three of them. Rose had slept beside Hannibal the way she would beside Cora or Dominique. Before Ben, she had never believed she could be so close to a man and feel safe. After Ben, she had never thought there could be another man she could feel that safety with. Life kept leading her to places she had never even considered.
The darkness, once the lantern was extinguished, was as absolute as that of a cave. She could hear Hannibal fumbling even that short distance, and she lifted up the blanket so he could slide in beside her.
“You will pardon me, my merciful lady,” Hannibal said as his elbow jostled hers, and she knew he was going to arrange himself as he had on the Triton--half off of the bed so that he didn’t crowd her. He had tumbled right off one night when the ship had hit a rough patch of sea; she’d caught a glimpse of the bruise rising on his arm the next morning and had known there were more where she could not see.
“Don’t be tiresome, Hannibal. Come over here.”
The little laugh he let out was barely a puff of air. “Γλαύξ,5 I would not dare to dream so–”
“If you fall out of bed again, your collarbone will snap like a twig and Ben will never forgive me for letting that happen. The bed is small, but we are not large people.” She was tall, but she was thin, and Hannibal’s consumption-ridden body sometimes seemed light enough to be blown away by a heavy breeze.
A pause. Then: “Rose–”
“Hannibal. Do not waste your energy fighting with me. You know I will win.”
After another pause, during which she heard only the creaking of the ship around them, he let out a long breath. “Once again, I concede, Πρόμαχος.”6
Still, he was so tentative as he eased closer that she sighed and reached out herself, tugging him closer and guiding his head down to rest on her chest.
The weight of him was light, so much lighter than when Ben lay like this. She had come to like the heavy weight of Ben, after she’d been able to overcome the fear that lurked in her body. He didn’t feel like an anchor, as she had worried he always would, but instead was a comfort.
Hannibal’s warmth against her breast reminded her more of Baby John’s, the lack of which had left her bereft since they left New Orleans–yet another thing that took her by surprise.
She had feared, during her pregnancy, that she was lacking in the maternal instincts that most women seemed to possess. Indeed, it had kept her awake at night, the worry that she would not be a proper mother at all to this tiny creature she and Ben had made. She had been determined to try as hard as she could, but trying turned out to be unnecessary. Her feelings seemed less soft, less warm than Minou’s for Charmian; they mostly moved between fascination at watching this tiny person becoming and a fierce protectiveness that she had never felt towards anyone, not even Ben. But she did love their solemn little baby, and she missed holding him against her, the warm weight of him. Sometimes, these past few weeks, her arms had ached with their own emptiness, and some of the tears she had shed when she was alone were not for Jeoff.
Back in Havana, she had clung to Ben to keep that ache at bay (soon, soon–we’ll be back with him soon–he’s safe with Olympe). Now, she tightened her arm around Hannibal’s shoulder (so slight, nothing at all like Ben’s) and felt him let out a sigh, his breath stirring the lace at the collar of her nightgown.
Hannibal had had a son, too, and Rose wondered whether had felt that same emptiness when he had fled Britain. One day, perhaps, she would ask him.
“When Livia comes back to town in the fall,” she said, “you should come and stay with us.”
“What? Why?”
Rose sighed and pushed his head back down from where he had lifted it. The last thing he needed to do was strain his collarbone again. “It’s unconscionable for you to be sleeping in people’s lofts and back rooms or on a porch somewhere when we have that big house. There’s plenty of room for you.”
The pause before he spoke told her she had truly surprised him, but of course he argued, just as she had known he would. “With a young lady in the house, it would not be proper–”
“You know perfectly well that Olympe knows that you see Zizi-Marie as the child she is. If my sister-in-law thought you were any danger to her daughter, she would have castrated you long ago.”
He let out a little laugh. “I cannot fault your logic there. But the parents of your students–”
“There won’t be any more students until the economy recovers, and who knows how long that will be?” Her heart still ached for her school; she longed for it the way she had only ever longed for an education of her own. But there was no chance of any students this fall; the free colored families of New Orleans couldn’t afford to educate even their sons right now. Perhaps someday… “And if that time comes, then you may play the gallant and remove yourself. Until then, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay with us.”
“Another mouth to feed–”
“You’re right, that will be an added expense,” she interrupted. “And one we can ill afford at the moment.” Her mind flashed back to the pearls lying in that stone safe at L'Ange Rouge. But no, that was blood money. Even if she did not believe in curses, it was better left where it was. (If they had taken it, she would have thought of Reina, of Calanthe, of Emmanuelle, of Amalie every time she spent a nickel. Better to banish those poor women’s memories to the back of her mind, to her darkest nightmares.) “So play for your supper–with your fiddle or at cards or anyway else you can make money–and pay for your board. But the bed is free.”
“We can discuss it with Ben later,” he said, in a tone that told her that he had no intention of ever discussing it with anyone.
“I’ve already discussed it with Ben. It was his idea.”
He made a very grumpy and unfamiliar sound; Hannibal Sefton was not accustomed to having no rejoinder. “You don’t want a dissipated consumptive of ill repute hanging about your family home.”
“As a matter of fact, we do.”
He made another unfamiliar sound, this one skeptical, and his voice when he spoke was patronizing. “You are kind–”
Rose hated above all things to be patronized. “Ben is kind,” she corrected. “I am honest. You know this.” Even he could not argue with that. “And I am honest when I say that we would love to have you with us.”
His silence was stubborn.
“Hannibal, you are our family.”
“...Rose…”
“You know it’s true. My god, Hannibal, after everything we’ve been through together? Everything you’ve done for us? Everything Ben has done for you? What is family but the ones you will run into danger for?” Mexico. Haiti. All the times Hannibal had walked into places she and Ben could never walk, simply to obtain information they needed. She trusted him with her life–with Ben’s. With Baby John’s. But the truth was, she didn’t really trust him with his own. He needed her and Ben to look after him. He had no one else. And yes, he was a silly, stubborn man, but Rose was just as stubborn, and so was her husband.
“If you really don’t want to be there, we won’t insist. But if you’re refusing because you think we’re acting out of politeness or because you worry you’re a burden to us, don’t. We aren’t, and you aren’t. As long as we have a home, you will have one too.”
“ἄνευ γὰρ φίλων οὐδεὶς ἕλοιτ᾽ ἂν ζῆν, ἔχων τὰ λοιπὰ ἀγαθὰ πάντα,”7 Hannibal murmured.
“‘And those who wish well to their friends for the friends’ sake are friends in the truest sense.’”8 She said the words in French, not Greek, translating them herself so that he couldn’t hide behind the quotation itself. So he would have to face its meaning, not just their common understanding of a long-dead language that they kindled to life between them, her and Hannibal and Ben. “I know you find this difficult to believe, but you are precious to us. So we would count it as a personal favor if you would consider yourself precious as well and take care of yourself.”
“You never tilt with foils, do you? It’s always naked blades with you.”
This was exactly the kind of compliment Rose most relished. “Think on it, at least.”
Another sigh. “If it pleases you, madam.”
“It does. It pleases me and Ben both.” She could have pressed, but that wasn’t her way. Instead, she stroked along his hairline, scritching her fingers against his scalp the way she did Ben’s. Hannibal’s skull felt so much more vulnerable, so close against the skin with nothing else to protect it. Fragile as life.
Again and again, Death stalked her and those she loved. Again and again, they barely slipped out of its grip–or did not (Jeoff). Safety was an illusion; she had known that since childhood. But what was family, if not a place you could, for just a moment, believe in safety? Feel it, in your bones, in your lungs, in your soul, in all the ways that mattered?
Rose longed for home, for Baby John, for her own bed and her husband beside her. Soon, soon, they would be together again, back under one roof. For now, she tightened her arms around Hannibal and held on.